FALL ON ICE—ICE BROKE OFF, MISJUDGED CONDITIONSNew Hampshire, Frankenstein Cliffs, Cave RouteI reached the top of the headwall on the Cave Route—approximately 50 feet high. The poor quality of the ice precluded me from placing more than one screw ...

Palcaraju and Santa Cruz. Between June 21 and July 21, fourteen Slovene climbers were active in the Cordillera Blanca. Aside from ascents on Artesonraju, Alpamayo and Huascarán, they made three new routes. On June 30, Emil Tratnik made the first t...

Mt. Dione, Cheech and Chong. On July 21 Jamie Chong and I summited a new route on Mt. Dione in the Tantalus Range. They dubbed it Cheech and Chong (700m, 16 pitches, V 5.10d). The line ascends the central buttress of the west face. Chong and I wer...

Mount Orville Attempt and Ascents of P 8900 and P 7209. On June 14, Sam Grubenhof and I were flown by Mike Ivers from Yakutat to 4000 feet on the North Crillon Glacier. We did a double carry the next day and set up Base Camp at 5300 feet. On the 1...

Manaslu, Northeast Ridge in Winter. As both Yasuhira Saito and I were fatigued when we came back from Everest, we spent several days of rest in Kathmandu. Then, we were carried by helicopter to Sama on December 2. On December 5 we moved to 4800 me...

Tasermiut Fjord, Ketil Pyramid, new route. I arrived in the area at the end of July, hoping to be the first climber to solo a new big wall route. I was surprised to find eight teams with a total of 30 climbers at Base Camp, though by the start of ...

Gorur Dome, First Ascent. Prasanta Roy led an expedition that made the first ascent of an unnamed peak (known locally as Gorur Dome, 6268m) in May and June. The summit was reached on June 9 after about eight to nine hours of climbing from CII by A...

Dhaulagiri South Face Solo Attempt. The unclimbed south face of Dhaulagiri remains unclimbed. Hiroshi Aota made his Base Camp and then Advance Base at the bottom of the glacier at 4300 meters. He then did some acclimatization climbing on P 6620. E...

Palomani Sur, first ascent, and various new terrain. Climbing on equal terms with Bolivian guide Pedro Quispe, Charlie Netherton attempted an integral traverse of the Palomani Tranca group in the northern Apolobamba. They approached this rarely vi...

Yellow Wall, Attempt, and Kidnapping by Terrorists. In July, Tommy Caldwell, Beth Rodden, John Dickey, and Jason “Singer” Smith traveled to the Karavshin region of the Pamir-Alai with the goal of establishing free routes in the area. On August 11,...

Witch Tower, The Needles, West Face. The first route on the impressive west face was done November 17, 1974 by Dave Black, Steve Eddy, and me; the beginning is from a short pillar over 100 yards south of the divide notch. The climb is superb, and ...

Tyree, attempted repeat of 1967 route. Walter Laserer, Chris Stangl, and I attempted the northwest ridge of Tyree (4,582 m). This is the unrepeated route of the 1967 first ascent, when Barry Corbet and John Evans reached the summit from a camp pla...

French Alpine Club: Our former president, Dr. William S. Ladd has recently been made an honorary member of the Club Alpin Français. Professor Piccard of stratosphere fame and F. S. Smythe, the conqueror of Kamet have been likewise honored.

Torre Central, Riders on the Storm, second ascent. David Stastny and I, both Czech, repeated the route Riders on the Storm on the east face of Torre Central in February 2002. The climb took 12 days (1/31-2/10), with four days spent in a portaledge...

Makalu, Post-Monsoon. There were two successful Spanish expeditions on the Kukuczka ridge of Makalu in the post-monsoon season. An expedition led by Jordi Bosch placed Josep Permane on the summit on September 24 and Xavier Robiro and Carles Figuer...

Mustagh Ata. The French guide Michel Vincent led eight clients to the summit of Mustagh Ata in August.Claude Jaccoux, Club Alpin Français

Windslab, by Cochrane Stewart. 253 pages, with 3 sketch maps. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1952. Price, 12/6.Scene: an Austrian hut in the Grossglockner region.Time: November 1945.Weather: a raging snow blizzard.Characters: an Austrian Huettenwar...

Vinson, summit register removed. On January 1, 2005 I removed the summit register book from the aluminum cylinder in which it had been housed for decades. The book was full, no longer useable, and I felt it would be too tempting a prize for a thie...

Patagonian Altitude Corrections. On page 181 of AAJ, 1993, the altitude of Cerro Cristal should be given as 2105 meters and that of Gorra Blanca as 2907 meters.

DARKNESS – STRANDEDCalifornia, Pinnacles National Monument, Condor CragOn the evening of November 15th, park staff assisted two climbers down from a climbing route after they had become stranded due to nightfall. Both climbers were uninjured.The c...