During a warm weather window in early October, I completed the first ground-up free ascent of a new eight-pitch route on the Black Wall. Prior to the ascent, I had cleaned the route from the top down and worked the pitches with a Mini Traxion. Hig...
In July, Bill Grasse, Ben Kiessel, and Matt Pickren established Black in Action (8 pitches, III 5.10+ R) on a prominent pillar below the Cross Fissures Overlook, which is located along the South Rim of the canyon. Six pitches gain the top of the p...
Steve House and various partners established two new routes on Camp Bird Road during the 2013-2014 winter season. The first route, Goodnight Irene (900’, IV M5/6 PG13), was climbed by House and Ian Yurdin in November. The five-pitch route was esta...
In mid-August, Justin Griffin and Kyle Dempster went into the Deep Lake area to explore Haystack Mountain and work on free climbing the upper part of an old Jeff Lowe aid line at the southern end of the wall. Steve Bechtel had previously tried to ...
The south face of Wolfshead is the sunniest and cleanest wall in the Cirque of the Towers. Armed with the experience of opening earlier routes on this wall, Brandon Gust and I packed a single rope, four steel and three nylon brushes, and the requi...
August found Oliver Deshler and I once again back in the Winds with dreams much bigger than our abilities. Hiking beneath lumpen packs, we came in from the north, forded the Green River twice, and then bashed our way through steep, trailless deadf...
Josh Wharton and I, along with photographer John Dickey, made a 10-day horse-packing trip to Mt. Hooker, starting from Big Sandy. We first attempted a new route on the east face of Hooker, a sub-wall on the left shoulder; however, we bailed at a s...
David Allfrey, Mason Earle and I went to Mt. Hooker from August 8–24. After hiking in from Dickenson Park, we began scoping the cliff and found what we believed was the most continuously blank and steep part of the wall. Over the next few days we ...
In August, Jared Spaulding and I put up a new route in the northern Wind River Range, near New Fork Park, on the 800-1,200’ China Wall. We started on good rock on the leftmost part of the main wall, which required several points of aid through a s...
In August, Eva Christ and Jake Tipton climbed a new route on the west aspect of Fremont Peak in Titcomb Basin, summiting a sub-spire they called the Marmot’s Tooth. The spire lies just left (north) of the West Face Spire. They called the 12-pitch ...
In AAJ 2014 we published a panorama looking from Syao Kang toward the Kangchenjunga massif, on which was marked the peak Nupchu (6,044m). While this correctly identifies the peak marked as "Nupchu" on the HMG-Finn map, it is not the peak climbed i...
Kenshi Imai, Kimihiro Miyagi, and Kenro Nakajima hoped to climb K6 West from the north (the same line climbed successfully by Raphael Slawinski and Ian Welsted at the end of July). Leaving base camp at 4,300m on July 4, the three Japanese made an ...
Uzun Brakk (formerly known as Conway’s Ogre) is a prominent mountain on the true left (north) bank of the Biafo Glacier. In 2009 we admired it from the foresummit of Lukpilla Brakk, but there was a lot of snow that year and we did not find the cou...
Paulo Roxo and I had not previously visited the Nangma Valley, and had no clear objective in mind. During research of this area we found neither information nor photos on the innermost parts of the valley, so our expectations were high.We made an ...
Prior to their ascent of Uli Biaho Tower (see report above), Luca Schiera and Silvan Schüpbach made the first ascent of a smaller rock tower above the lower Trango Glacier, which they dubbed Submarine Peak.This tower forms the first point on the l...
One year after our first expedition to the beautiful Solu Glacier (see AAJ 2013), Gaby Lappe, Clemens Pischel, and I returned with a load of big-wall equipment to the village of Bisil and pastures of Pakora. Once more, it was not only a climbing t...
Our all-Pakistan expedition to the Fourth Koksil Glacier took place from August 17–28 and comprised Kamal Haider, Sa'ad Mohamed, Ahmed Mujtaba, Syed Jawad Tashfeen, and me from Islamabad, and Arif Baig and Mohammad Yahya from Shimshal. Koksil Sar ...
After withdrawing from the Diamir Face of Nanga Parbat, following the terrorist attack, my next expedition was to the Ghidims Valley with Polish friend Anita Parys.After crossing Boesam Pass, Anita and I, along with locals Ilyas and Bulbul, reache...
In August-September 2012, Frank Gasser (Italy), Detlef Seelig (Germany), and Birgit Walk (Austria) visited the Ghidims Valley. The first people to reach the start of this valley, at a place called Mandi Kushlak, were Henry Montagnier and Captain C...
In June the international team of Olov Isaksson (Sweden), Anton Karnoup (Russia/U.S.), Jesse Mease (U.S.), and I (as leader) trekked to the Choktoi Glacier. Having been denied permission to enter the Chinese Karakoram, and denied official registra...