After doing two first free ascents in the Torres del Paine [see Chile section] Stephane Hanssens and I headed back to El Chaltén. (We had already been there in December and climbed the Ragni route on Cerro Torre.) On our last three days in South...

Three years ago, at a round table in Lecco, Italy, Mario Conti and Carlo Aldè showed Matteo “Berna” Bernasconi and me a few photos of the west face of Torre Egger. This little information was enough for Berna and I to tackle the challenge of ope...

On February 21, Sarah Hart and I made the first ascent of the west face of Mojon Rojo, calling our route El Zorro (700m, 5.10 A1). The west face of Mojon Rojo, while of modest altitude, is quite striking from the Niponino bivouac, and I had w...

From January 24–26, 2013, Chad Kellogg and I made the second ascent of Cerro Torre’s Corkscrew route: a link-up that climbs the first two-thirds of the southeast ridge, traverses across the hanging icefield on the upper south face, and then f...

Pomiu was first climbed in October 1983 by Ted Vaill’s American team, via a fairly direct line up the south face (5.10c, fixed ropes). Liam Lahr, Eric Perlman, and Alan Steck reached the summit, followed a day later by Robert Schneider, Brock...

In late July, Ye Feng, Zhang Yunping, and I climbed a new line up the southwest face to reach the south-southwest ridge. It was an enjoyable and yet tormenting 52 hours, as we were hit by various calamities. On the approach one of our guid...

On October 24 and 25, Jérôme Para and I made the first ascent of the ca 700m northwest face of Daogou (the higher and easterly of the two Daogou peaks). [However, see the correction below.] On the 23rd, it took nine hours to walk from the main S...

In August 2010, Li Yue and I spent 10 days exploring five different side branches of the Shuangqiao Gou. In late July 2011, I returned with Ye Feng, Wu Peng, and Gong Xiaorui and spent another 10 days walking up the Shuangqiao and then aro...

Iza Czaplicka, Ilona Gaweda, Bartlomiej Klimas, Joanna Klimas, my husband Adam Rys, and I, all from Poland, spent from August 15–September 1 in the Miyar. There were few days without rain, which meant that while short routes were manageable,...

Marion Poitevin, Christian Trommsdorff (French), and Gugu and Li Zhongli (Chinese) climbed Abi as a joint venture involving the French Groupe de Haute Montagne and the Chinese Mountain Development Institute. (Climbs in the Daogou Valley and on ...

Three Indian climbers completed a partial new route up the south face of Toro in July, unwittingly following the 2008 Lopez-Pfaff route (5.9) to the large basin about halfway up, and then continuing more or less straight up, to the left of...

In mid-August, Phil Varley (U.K.), Marek Zoladek, and I (both Polish) arrived in the Miyar Valley, and after a period of bad weather established an advanced base at 4,850m on the Chhudong Glacier. This was the site of the high camp that Mare...

In 2009, Pawel Fidryk and I visited the Miyar, where we made three ascents. We first climbed an obvious crack system on the left side of Toro peak’s south face. Completed on August 21, this gave 300m of amenable UIAA V, followed by 300m of wal...

Young students Yuchiro Iida, Shimpei Kubota, Kensei Mitsui, Tomoyuki Takayama, and I as leader arrived in Darcha on August 18 and then took the road that is being constructed over the Shingo La to Padam. We walked to aid acclimatization, and...

Expeditions to India can be a disaster for morale, if they experience a combination of bad conditions, bad weather, bad local services, and too spicy food. This was the case for the 2009 Groupe Militaire de Haute Montagne (GMHM) expedition t...

Cas van den Gevel (The Netherlands) and William van Meegdenburg (Switzerland) climbed to 5,985m on an unnamed peak about 1km east-northeast of their Bagini Glacier base camp (4,510m) while acclimatizing for an attempt on the north face of Ka...

According to various estimates, more than 150 people climbed the Ragni Route (600m, 90° M4) on the west face of Cerro Torre during the 2012-2013 summer season. This is more than twice as many people as climbed it in the previous 40 years, sin...

Undoubtedly the most significant Himalayan expedition by Indian mountaineers during 2012 resulted in the second ascents of two 7,000m summits, by new routes, in just 12 days climbing above base camp. The venue was the remote Jongsang, a long p...

Mirko Breckner, Max Dünsser, Dario Haselwarter, Reinhard Hones, Felix Sattleberger, and Uli Steiner, young climbers from the Deutscher Alpinverein (German Alpine Club), and David Göttler as leader, spent October in the Tshiburongi Valley o...

One of the advantages of living in China is that it gives access to a number of unclimbed, indeed unattempted, peaks. Perusal of Tom Nakamura’s Sichuan’s Most Outstanding Unclimbed Peaks led Simon Moore, Rimon Than, Alex Tomaczynski, and I t...