In late February and early March, Ethan Pringle and I did three new routes and some immaculate deep water soloing. Near Mashanig tower, which I had climbed in 2009, we did a 1,000-foot 5.6 up the west ridge of Thabbit’s Tower (named af...
In March my wife, Brittany Griffith, and I traveled to Yemen’s Socotra Island, an incredibly diverse oval of isolated land in the Arabian Sea. Often called the “Galapagos of the Arabian Sea” for its 300-plus endemic species of flora and ...
In November, Steffen Krug and I spent three weeks in this very special sandstone area. After enjoying some classic big lines, we repeated a few of the modern routes, including La Guerre Sainte (7b, AAJ 2001), a 12-pitch bolted route on J...
Raul Gonzalez and Mikel Saez de Urabain climbed a new line on Bes Parmak Sivrisi (3,520m), at the head of the Cimbar Valley, in July. El Pastor Electrico (425m) ascends a shallow buttress on the northwest face, to the right of the original r...
In August, Carlo Cosi, Enrico Geremia, Nicolò Geremia, and I climbed two new routes up the impressive west face of Lower Guvercinlik (3,000m) in the Emli Valley. None of us knew the area, so our first two days were spent wandering throu...
In early March, Ben Dare and Daniel Joll made the first complete ascent of the south face of Marian Peak (1,000m, 21 A2). The two did the route in a 28-hour round trip from the Homer Hut, and they said the climbing was excellent and likely w...
In July, Jonathan Jay, an American living in Almaty, soloed the northwest face (750m, Russian 3B) of Nursultan (4,330m, formerly called Komsomol). After skiing a few turns down the normal route on the southwest ridge, he dropped onto the northw...
The Zalisky Ala-Tau has many peaks, the highest being Talgar (4,973m), with many established routes. But most climbers bypass the Tuyuk-su valley, despite its proximity to Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan. The Tuyuk-su is just abov...
After a committing eight-day climb, my friend Stéphane Benoist and I reached the summit of Annapurna via the south face. I had been to Annapurna twice before: once in 2000 with Christian Trommsdorff and Patrick Wagnon, and then in 2010 with Stépha...
In 1984, Swiss alpinists Norbert Joos and Erhard Loretan ventured with a small team up the seven-kilometer-long east ridge of Annapurna, which borders the south face in a rippling line of subpeaks and summits. For the final four days on the crest,...
We first saw the 500m walls of It-kaya, east of the village of Bezengi, while making the first ascent of Ak-kaya in January 2011. The area around It-kaya is strikingly beautiful, with many herbs, flowers, and boulders, making it a kind of ...
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Pico Titán (4,263m) is situated on the Cordón de Límite in the Central Andes, 6km northwest of Cristo Redentor, near the Argentinean-Chilean frontier. Given its proximity to the village of Las Cuevas and the Portillo ski center, it is fairly eas...
On November 5, 2011, Mijel Lotfi and I reached the summit of the mythic Nevado Excelsior (5,773m), the highest peak of the Macizo de la Jaula. This almost unexplored area is located west of the famous Cordón del Plata. Most of the peaks in the ...
The Argentina-Chile border has a number of lesser-known peaks, and many others have only seen a few ascents. Cerro Caracoles (4,504m) is one of these. Seen easily by travelers who cross the Andes by car, it had only three ascents, all from from...
On July 8, Gregg Beisly (NZ), Paul Meehan (US), and I left La Paz at around 6 a.m. with the intention of climbing water ice in the valley containing Laguna Jachcha Khasiri, the same valley used to access the regular route (southeast ridge) on Jati...
Traditional Aymara people have descriptive names for their mountains: Illimani is Water Bearer, Huayna Potosi is Thunderous Youth, and Mururata the Beheaded Peak. Our expectations were therefore high as we set off to climb Gigante Grande in the so...
Of all Illimani’s aspects, the south face is perhaps the most beautiful and impressive. This huge wall offers lines of high technical difficulty, through vertical ice runnels and rock. Hidden from general view, it seems inaccessible, but it is not...
[Editor’s note: Pat Goodman won a 2009 Lyman Spitzer Cutting-Edge Award from the AAC. This report on his permit frustrations in October 2009 is reprinted from the AAC's trip reports.] The five Chinese men and women stood confident, and in...
The Bezengi Wall (sometimes spelled Bezingi) rises along the mountain frontier between Russia on the north and Georgia on the south. The sharp, ca 13km ridge links several of the highest peaks of the Caucasus: Lial’ver (4,350m), Gestola...