If somebody said you could still find 6,000m peaks in Nepal that were easy to approach, not technically challenging, and still unclimbed, would you believe them?In 2013, I had planned to explore a new route on Chulu East, but several weeks before ...
Standing on the edge of the moraine and surveying detritus of other climbers, Simon Verspeak and I saw our first ascent potentially unraveling. It was not surprising that another expedition had attempted the peak—its snowy pyramid of over 6,200m s...
Sometimes we simply need to change the way we look at a mountain in order to rejuvenate our climbing game. We did this with Himlung Himal, a classic 7,126m mountain above the Phu Valley. It is usually crowded with big groups in the autumn, but in ...
Tiquimani is the last great mountain in the central cordillera before the Altiplano slips east toward the Bolivian jungle. Situated to the northeast of Huayna Potosi, it appears as the guardian of the Zongo Valley and, indeed, in Aymara its name m...
July and August saw the first stage of the Mujer Montaña and French Mountaineering Federation’s High Mountain Women Group project. On August 1, two of the participants, Susana Rodriguez (Venezuela) and Denys Sanjines (Bolivia), made the first asce...
On September 17, Henry Chaplin, Caradoc (Crag) Jones, David Lund, Skip Novak, Stephen Venables, and I left the yacht Pelagic Australis to attempt a 15-day ski traverse across the rarely visited Salvesen Range in the southeastern part of South Geor...
From November 19–December 19, Albert Argemi (Spain), Ken Ellison (Canada), Julie Jones (U.K.), Arnount Wittert (Netherlands), and I, as leader, summited and skied 12 peaks on the Peninsula. Six of these, located between Andvord Bay and Paradise Ha...
In 2008, Kathrin Münzel and I reached the eastern end of the Wakhan Corridor and Oxus Snow Lake (AAJ 2009), and subsequently several expeditions followed this pioneering trip; Alan Halewood's parties (AAJ 2011 and AAJ 2014), Bartek Tofel's Polish ...
The Bond: Survival on Denali and Mount Huntington. Simon McCartney. Mountaineers Books, 2016. Paperback, 304 pages, $19.95.Standing beneath the north face of Alaska’s Mt. Huntington, one cannot help but feel an overwhelming sense of terrifying awe...
During the summer of 2010, a series of violent acts against foreigners in northern Afghanistan led our team to explore an area of the Rushan Range in Tajikistan instead of the Hindu Kush. We drove from Dushanbe to Khorog, from which I hoped we cou...
What to do next? This question lingered in my mind after I completed all the 8,000ers without supplementary oxygen. Like everyone else, I don’t have a compass that keeps me directed on the right line to follow. So I thought about my lifelong passi...
Having only soared around the unclimbed mountain on Google Earth, it felt wild to cross a river into the winter-shadowed valley beneath its north face. The mountain was what I called Bhandar Lek (6,024m), what some locals call Dhaule, after the na...
On January 15, 2017, a British military group commemorating Henry Worsley and comprising Alex Brazier, Chris Brooke, Jamie Facer-Childs, Alun George, Lou Rudd, and Ollie Stoten made the first ascent of Roberts Massif (ca 2,700m), while returning f...
After summiting Mt. Vinson on January 4, 2017, Larry Holmgren (USA), Nate Opp (USA), Liam Suckling (Australia), and I went old-school. Instead of flying back to the Union Glacier, we spent two weeks traveling with skis and sleds, descending the Br...
In December, a ski mountaineering party led by Bruce Goodlad (U.K.) was dropped off at Tarrada Point on Brabant Island. They skied up to a base camp in front of Mt. Parry (2,520m). The following day, with 50-knot winds over the summits, they skied...
The South Platte region of Colorado has a strong history of scrappy rock climbing and a staunch ethic of bolting new routes on lead. So when my partner Dave Montgomery and I set out to climb the west face of the iconic Cynical Pinnacle, we knew ...
Zowie is similar in shape and size to the classic RMNP spire the Petit Grepon. The only thing Zowie has lacked in comparison to the ultra-popular Petit has been a truly classic route up its south face. In June, Dede Humphrey and I climbed Magic in...
In a superb effort, Josh Wharton completed the three hardest free routes in the Park in one year: Sarchasm (5.14a, a sport route below Longs Peak), the Honeymoon is Over (5.13c) and Dunn-Westbay Direct (5.14a), both on the Diamond. Wharton didn’t ...
Jeff Dickson and Tobias Link climbed the north ridge of the North Tooth, one of a pair of limestone towers just north of Mt. Wardle in the Vermilion Range. Their 600m route, climbed during a two-day outing in May, went at D 5.10a/b.– Dougald MacDo...
On August 1, Mark Klassen, Tim Johnson, Margie Smith, and Larry Stanier completed a new route up the northwest ridge (Napsihu Ridge) of the Finger in 12 pitches plus scrambling (AD 5.8). The route has some bolt protection and good rappel anchors, ...