For years, I have gazed at the steep 4,500’ south face of Going-to-the-Sun Mountain (9,642’) and imagined what it would be like to quest up this intricate terrain. Topo maps and aerial images revealed numerous possibilities, showing massive freest...
Winter access in the Cabinets is notoriously onerous. Climbers cannot drive to most summer trailheads, and many areas are in designated wilderness, preventing snowmobile access. As a result, some big objectives wait for spring, when there’s a deli...
On June 21, Arthur Herlitzka and I climbed a probable new route up the north face of Borah Peak (12,667’). The Waning Crescent Couloir (2,250’, IV M4 55° snow) angles left across the face between Borah, Borah, Borah (Ball-Colwell-Schilling, 2004) ...
After realizing that Redfish Lake Creek was too high to cross to reach Elephant’s Perch during a trip in early June, Sara Morrow and I opted to backtrack and climb a pinnacle we’d spotted along the canyon rim earlier in the approach. We scrambled ...
Located 20 miles from the trailhead, itself at the dead end of a 40-mile mountain road, Mystery Dome resides in a glaciated canyon that is home to old-growth forests, the howls and tracks of wolves, and the incessant rumble of Whitecap Creek. It’s...
On July 21, 2020, Steph Williams and I climbed, in a one-day round-trip, a nearly continuous rib that starts amid the folds of the west-facing aspect beneath Silver Star Mountain’s west summit, and terminates close to that summit. Our route starts...
Ever since I started climbing, I have been enamored with the massive north face of Johannesburg Mountain. From the 8,100’ summit, the face drops dramatically for over a vertical mile, straight down to the Cascade River. The face is complex, with o...
Oro de Tontos (3,600’, V 5.10) on the southwest arête of Eldorado Peak. The line on the right shows the approach to the arête. Photo by John Scurlock. In April 2020, during an attempt at the Pearl Necklace ski tour, I saw the largest feature ...
Sam Boyce and I climbed the North Buttress of East Twin Needle—also known as the Thread of Gneiss, a name coined by John Roper in 1981—on July 31. The buttress rises 1,800’ and required nine pitches of roped climbing, most of which were 250’ or mo...
Wayne Wallace is a legend of the Cascades, and out of all his exploits, none may be more epic than his solo first ascent of the mile-long Mongo Ridge—the south ridge of Mt. Fury’s west peak—deep in the Northern Pickets. Lani Chapko and I both had ...
Everything Sam Boyce and I had heard about the unclimbed south buttress of Whatcom Peak (7,574’) in the Northern Pickets made it sound like we’d find nothing but chossy 5.11 if we ventured out there, but we wanted to see for ourselves. Sam had tak...
Jenny Abegg (right) and Kaytlyn Gerbin descending into the White Rock Lakes basin on the Ptarmigan Traverse, during their first complete traverse of the North Cascades High Route. The Dana, Dome, and Chickamin glaciers, along with Dome Peak, lie...
On May 9, Adrian Ballinger (USA) made a ski descent of Makalu (8,463m). Ballinger summited by the normal route (northwest ridge) at 9 a.m., along with Sherpa climbers Dorji Sonam and Pasang Sona, using supplemental oxygen. From the top, he downcli...
The initial objective for Silvia Loreggian and me was unclimbed Sharphu III (6,220m). However, a few days before departure, our agency in Nepal informed us it had just noticed that the height of the mountain was listed erroneously in the permit ...
Baihaizishan from the west showing the 2022 traverse Pilgrimage (left to right, with descent from col between the main and south summits). Photo by Tamotsu Nakamura Baihaizishan (a.k.a. Tshungpingling, 5,924m on the official PLA map, 29°57’24...
Pik Ostryi from the southeast, showing (1) the 2022 route and (2) the 2021 first ascent route. The summit is near the triangle. Photo: Nadya Oleneva Collection. In the summer of 2022, Russian climbers Anar Demirov, Oksana Kochubey, and Ilia Z...
Clearly, Providence was in force in July 1967 at the south face of Denali as four climbers in their early 20s stood at the base scrutinizing a sequence of ascending buttresses, black and menacing, that finished 5,000 feet higher on the summit pl...
On June 26, during an expedition to the Diamir Face of Nanga Parbat, François Cazzanelli and Pietro Picco created a difficult variation start to the standard Kinshofer Route. The new line climbs the 150m serac between the Kinshofer and the lower...
Under starry skies at what will be the first bivy of many in northwestern Canada, it becomes apparent that the vampire lore surrounding our destination is not entirely fictitious, as swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitoes, freshly hatched out of the sp...
Starting the first pitch of Maïkan (150m, WI6+). Québec is a wild place—it’s always the first thing I tell my friends who visit from abroad. The province has countless lakes and streams, and all that water freezes during our long winters and...