At 10:30 a.m. on May 14, Climber 1 (male, 27) and Climber 2 (male, 26) arrived at Kombucha Crag, a waterfront cliff north of San Francisco. They both had over four years of climbing experience, indoors and outdoors. After several hours of climbing...
On April 1, climber X (female, 45), was top-rope soloing Landslide (5.8), an 80-foot sport route on the extreme right of the popular Scale Wall, a limestone cliff in Auburn State Recreation Area, northeast of Sacramento. A group of climbers includ...
Around 9:30 p.m. on Friday, October 7, two climbers (both male, mid-20s) left the San Francisco area for a fast ascent of Mt. Shasta by the Clear Creek route up the southeast side, a 16-mile round trip with 7,800 feet of elevation gain. In late su...
In a 24-hour period beginning on June 6, four incidents saw five climbers injured and a climbing guide killed on Mt. Shasta. A storm over the prior weekend doused Shasta with rain, snow, fog, and freezing temperatures, creating very firm and icy c...
In the afternoon of May 21, a mother (62) and daughter were descending the Avalanche Gulch route. They were unfamiliar with the route and attempted to descend the climber’s left side of the Red Banks, a steep, reddish band of cliffs. The narrow ch...
On May 15 at 10 a.m., the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office called U.S. Forest Service ranger Nick Meyers to inform him of an inReach SOS activation near Red Banks, a series of cliffs that form a prominent landmark on the Avalanche Gulch route. No ...
During all of 2022, there were a total of 11 SAR incidents on Mt. Shasta, about half of the running average of 20 incidents per year since 1992. Eight of the incidents were rescues, one a self-rescue, and one a false alarm (false inReach activatio...
After three days of sunny weather, I, Jacob Weintraub (24), and my partner, Randy Lee (37), had finished a double carry beyond the icefall at the end of the Northeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier. We camped at the base of the West Rib route. On M...
On May 17 at 9 p.m., one member of a three-person climbing team fell into a crevasse on the Southeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier, at around 8,400 feet, below the North Buttress of Mt. Hunter. The team was on skis and unroped at the time of the f...
On June 11 at 9:45 p.m., NPS rangers received an SOS activation near 19,500 feet. It was reported that a 49-year-old male climber had fallen from the summit ridge and had sustained a head injury. The injured climber stated that he was unable to de...
On June 3 at 5:42 p.m. NPS rangers at 14,200-foot camp received a call requesting assistance from a guided team on the summit ridge of Denali. The guide stated that one of their clients was “unresponsive, apneic, and pulseless.” The 48-year-old ma...
On May 3, a 35-year-old male climbing solo on the West Buttress route was reported missing. The climber had departed Kahiltna Base Camp on April 27 for a ten-day solo attempt on Denali (20,310’). He was the first climber of the season on the West ...
Many of the illnesses and traumatic injuries that led to ranger response could have been prevented with prudent decision-making and reasonable ascent profiles during the expeditions. Climbers should always err on the conservative side of risk mana...
The 1985 AAJ published a single paragraph about the first ascent of the route now known as the Slovak Direct. A more substantial account is published below, adapted from the book 100 rokov JAMES (“100 Years of JAMES”), released in 2021 on the cent...
In the year 1964, when Royal Robbins was 29 and at the peak of his powers, he performed an astonishing amount of hard climbing: the second ascent of two El Capitan routes, the first ascent of the north face of Mt. Hooker in the Wind Rivers (one of...
Jon Inoriza approaching the base of Monte Roncagli (2,251m) with the 2022 route on the south side indicated. Photo by Ibai Rico. Following in the spirit of a previous expedition that Ibai Rico had made to the Cloue Icefield in far southern Ch...
Lifelong educator, explorer, climber, musician, fine wood craftsman, and mentor David F. McGivern took his last breath on October 11, surrounded by siblings, a few friends, and his high school sweetheart and life partner Marie Dochnahl. David was ...
On Sunday, January 29, 2023, Aaron Minton and I climbed a new ice route on the west face of Sloan Peak (7,835'). The climbing involved seven new pitches with difficulties up to WI4+, and we continued up the upper portion of Superalpine, a WI3/4 on...
In March 2023, Elias Antaya, Ethan Berkeland, Jonathan Koenig, and I were having a productive cabin-based trip climbing beautiful ice lines throughout the Chitistone Valley in the Wrangell Mountains. After repeating Broken Dreams (1,500’, WI6, Com...
On August 29, 2022, I arrived in El Chaltén with one objective: a winter solo ascent of Cerro Chaltén (Fitz Roy) via the Supercanaleta, a goal since my first wintertime visit to the Chaltén Massif in 2013. I returned in 2019, but never managed ...