In August, Harry Bloxham, Clay Conlon, Al Docherty, Harry Kingston, Ross Davidson, and I (all from the U.K.) spent three weeks in the Djangart Valley. We had planned to attempt three 5,000m-plus unclimbed summits. Just before traveling, however, w...
I first thought about visiting Sabakh back in the 1990s, a time when my blood started boiling just from the possibility of doing a first ascent. During that time the archives of the Russian Mountaineering Federation were not in electronic format, ...
In Sedona, Zach Harrison and Jack Snyder climbed one new route and free-climbed another. In April 2013, they free climbed the aid route Justice of the Peace (550’, A2, McDonald-Shaffer,) on Courthouse Butte. The route climbs the northwest aspect o...
After two failed attempts, Tom Ruddy and I completed a new route on the east face of Castle Rock Spire in July. The route shares part of the first pitch with the Regular Route (Bettler-Long-Siri-Steck-Wilson, AAJ 1951) before it goes left and asce...
“An alpine El Capitan,” as Galen Rowell described it, Angel Wings is neither as tall nor as steep as El Capitan, but it is impressive in its own right. Compared to El Capitan’s pristine sea of chiseled geometry, Angel Wings twists roguishly from t...
The Moonstone Buttress stands out like a shark fin, peeling away from the rest of the buttresses in Whitney Portal. It’s speckled with dikes, black knobs, and sometimes is utterly blank. After a solid attempt on the wall early in the summer with C...
One step from the sliding-glass door of the Whitney Portal Store kitchen shows it all: the looming pyramid of the south-facing Wrinkled Lady, slashed with dihedrals, rising to 10,900’; below it, a system of slabs, terraces, dikes, and tunnels that...
After talking with Doug Robinson and getting his account of the first ascent of the southwest face of Mt. Whitney via Lost (AAJ 2007), Urmas Franosch and I decided to take a look. Being a local guide has its advantages, and we sent our equipment i...
During the summer of 2008, Kyle Sox and I completed a new traverse in the Evolution region of the Sierra Nevada: the Evolution Crest Traverse (VI 5.9). This consists of a complete traverse of the Sierra Crest from Bishop Pass to Piute Pass, a dist...
I first noticed the cliffs adjacent to the Brownstone Mine while hiking to Merriam Peak some years ago, thinking there might be good routes to do on the clean, featured granite. In the summer of 2009 my wife and I hiked over Italy Pass and down in...
Just a few miles west of the world-famous Buttermilk Boulders, the Horton Lake trail leads into a valley of spectacular scenery and mining history, and to the dramatic east face of Four Gables (12,720’). On August 15, 2012, Cadence Reed and I asce...
A friend texted me about the El Cap bird-nesting closures while Nik Berry and I were on the Dihedral Wall, aiding the first four pitches. “Turns out we’re in a closed area,” I said. Nik responded, “Really! I’ll make a peregrine omelet.” Seven hund...
I was being pummeled from every direction. After two days of nonstop travel to Bishkek, my fatigued mind was slow to comprehend what was happening. Then realized it was just my teammates, enthusiastically ambushing me at the airport. The six of us...
Our group consisted of five female mountaineers from the Glasgow University Mountaineering Club: Hannah Gibbs, Carol Goodall, Imelda Neale, Libby Southgate, and me (Emily (Roo) Ward). We planned a lightweight, self-sufficient expedition. Sadly, ou...
The four-man team of Joe Prinold, Virgil Scott, Dominic Southgate, and Samuel Thompson began their expedition to the Jamantau Range, just north of Arpa Valley and west of the At-Bashi, on August 24. After a 12-hour drive from Bishkek, they camped ...
While perusing the 2013 AAJ I stumbled upon a line from Josh Mucci about the first ascent of Bad Moon Rising, “We have…had free climbing in mind while new-routing on Liberty Cap, as the lines are damn near built for classic free climbing.” I reach...
On May 31, Lucho Rivera and I began climbing the southwest face of Liberty Cap, ground-up, and succeeded in making the first free ascent of the formation. Our new route Mahtah (1,100’, 16 pitches, 5.12+/5.13-), named for the Ahwahneechee word for ...
On January 12, 2013, Vern Nelson Jr. and I made the second known ascent and first known free ascent of Goat’s Beard (IV WI5), an approximately 350m ice climb up the center of the Goat Wall in Mazama. The route was pioneered in 1991 by Tom Kimbrell...
In early September, Erik Bonnett and I climbed a mostly independent route on the northwest buttress of Bonanza Peak, reaching its southwest summit (9,320’). This route begins on the prominent buttress a few hundred yards left of the Soviet Route (...
Both the north and south summits of Hozomeen Mountain (8,012’) bear a great mystique, and an ascent from any direction has long daunted mountaineers (see the “Battle for Hozomeen” in Fred Beckey’s Challenge of the North Cascades). In the early 200...