In the fall of 2009, Jeremy Aslaksen and I climbed a new route on the south face of Kingfisher in the Fisher Towers. We called the route Weird Science [AAJ 2010] and made a pact to see if we could do new routes on all five of the main Fish...
Over a handful of weekends from June to August 2012, I tricked three unsuspecting victims into making the 5,000’ vertical trek up to Lone Peak Cirque to establish a new route we called the Wonderette (500’, 5.12). The idea for the route was ...
In October 2012, Fisher Towers veterans Joe Forrester and Jeremy Aslaksen climbed a new variation to the Forrest-Briggs route on the Citadel: the Mugacki Variation (V 5.3 A2+). The route starts at the southernmost base of the tower and avoids ...
On October 22, 2012, Chris Kalous freed a wild new route, Ivory Tower (110m, 5.13b) on southeastern Utah’s iconic Castleton Tower. Ivory Tower climbs four long pitches up a sharp arête and face on the southeast spine of Castleton, to the rig...
At the end of our visit to Patagonia, Tadej Kriselj and I used a short window of good weather to climb a new route on El Mocho. At first, we followed the approximate line of the Elorza-Moises attempt, then followed splitter cracks of all si...
On June 25, 2011, my wife, Betsy Winston, and I arrived in Constable Pynt to celebrate our honeymoon by climbing and exploring in Liverpool Land. Because Hurry Fjord was still full of pack ice, and could not be crossed by boat, we were forced ...
After three days of rest following a new route on Fitz Roy, Tadej Kriselj and I made a fair-means ascent of the southeast ridge of Cerro Torre, following the Kennedy-Kruk line with the Lama-Ortner variation (900m, 5.12b A2 75?). We used an...
After climbing the North Tower of Paine [see Chile section of Climbs and Expeditions], I was joined by Tadej Kriselj from Kamnik, Slovenia. When the morning bus dropped us in El Chaltén, the weather was perfect. We repacked our bags and headed to ...
Cerro Murallón (2,656m) rises above the Southern Patagonia Ice Cap, along the Argentina-Chile frontier. Although it has received several new routes in the past decade, including the first ascent of the southeast pillar in 2012, the peak h...
In early April 2012, Chris Weidner and I linked up up two of the biggest peaks in Red Rock, in a day, both via new routes climbed onsight. We began in the crack system 100m to the left of the Warrior on Cactus Flower Tower and climbed 120m befor...
In August 2012, two routes were established on the previously unclimbed east face of Mt. Idaho (12,065’). They both go more or less up the center of the diamond-shaped face. Kevin Hansen and Wes Collins completed the first ascent of the fa...
In April 2012, Mathieu Brown and Zach Harrison climbed a five-pitch, “stellar and demanding” route up the southeast face of Zoroaster, the well-known formation near the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The new route (520’, III 5.10 C1) ascends ...
I was fortunate to spend some time visiting with Layton Kor at his home in Kingman, Arizona, in the last few years before he died on April 21, 2013. While Layton was still healthy enough, we were able to get out climbing. On a trip to wester...
Joshua Foreman, Graham Kraft, Luc Mehl, Josh Mumm, and John Sykesmade an unsupported traverse of Mt. Logan, traveling 370 miles from Yakutat, Alaska, to McCarthy, Alaska. They started out by crossing Disenchantment Bay in pack rafts, attempted L...
After much research and discussion in spring 2012, Ben Ditto, Mason Earle, Bronson Hovnanian, and I combined efforts for an expedition to Mt. Proboscis. Our primary goal was to establish a new free route on the southeast face and, hopefully,...
In mid-August 2012, I had an opportunity for a free helicopter ride into the Waddington Range with landscape photographer Scott Pick and his wife, Marina. We flew from Bluff Lake to the Plummer Hut on the evening of August 11, and I depa...
Big alpine ascents in the Canadian Rockies are few and far between. A variety of reasons for this undeniable fact have been suggested: bad rock, remoteness, poor forecasts. There may even be some merit to all of them. But I believe the rea...
On September 15, 2012, Jim Elzinga and I went to the beautiful Height of the Rockies Provincial Park in British Columbia and completed a moderate gem on Mt. King George (3,422m), having made two previous attempts on the route. To reach ...
In July, Jean-Pierre Ouellet and Matt McCormick climbed a new route on the northwest face of South Howser Tower. The Wandering Direct (IV 5.11 R) starts briefly in the chimney that defines Compassion Club (Gibson-Schaffer, 2012); it then br...
On August 6, 2012, Blake Herrington, Scott Bennett, and I flew into the Sunny Knob base camp on the Tiedemann Glacier of the Waddington Range. We were accompanied by our very good friend and talented photographer Forest Woodward. We spent t...