A general trend of unsettled and wet weather plagued the summer months in New Zealand and limited the amount of activity in the alpine. The most notable ascents were repeats: the second ascent of Maid Marian (1,000m, 22/5.11c A2, Dare-Joll, 2013),...
In August a team of Japanese college students, Gakushi Eguchi, Satoru Miyachi, Yuu Nishida, and Ryota Takanezawa, drove from Leh over the Shingo La to Darcha, and then trekked into the Lenak Valley via the village of Thangso. They planned to climb...
Ondra Macek and I attempted a new route on the right side of the 1,300m west face of Grosvenor (a.k.a. Riwuqie Feng, 6,376m). We left our advanced base below the wall on September 27 and climbed eight pitches up to AI4/5 (80–90°), reaching an alti...
From the beginning, Jonathan Cooper, Japhy Dhungana, and I had the mindset of an exploratory expedition, seeking out previously unclimbed walls between the major Himalayan peaks. In November, we found many potential lines in the Barun Valley, whic...
Jan Kobald, Markus Kollmann, Philipp Prünster, and I (all South Tyroleans, age 23–25) couldn’t wait for our Christmas holidays. Markus and I knew the country of Oman a bit from an earlier climbing journey in 2012–’13. Ever since, we knew we would...
One part of the limestone Hajar mountains lies within the United Arab Emirates. In 2009 I was living in the UAE, and while walking in Wadi Naqab I came across an impressive crag. Red Wall, as it became known, appeared to have been formed by a mass...
For the past year we had been planning a trip into the Revelations, for which we had won a McNeil-Nott Award. But after waiting almost a week to fly in, with low clouds sitting over some key passes, our pilot suggested an alternative destination: ...
Never have I sandbagged my friends or myself so incredibly hard. The whole adventure started when I convinced my poor unsuspecting victims, Reese Doyle and Robin Miller, to take a lovely flight out to my friend Matt Bertke’s lodge at stunning Chel...
There are a number of attractive unclimbed faces in the Himalaya that have not even been attempted because the approach is considered too difficult or dangerous. On paper, our concept was simple: We would use paragliders to catch thermals and fly ...
In late 2017, with the mountain guide Gabriel Fava and porter Joaquin Gomez (both from Argentina), I traveled to the central-eastern part of the little-visited Northern Patagonian Icefield, approximately 20km north of Cerro Arenales. We were famil...
THE NEWS THAT I’d been hired to work in the emergency department of a large trauma center was bittersweet. My friends Brian Prince, Adam Ferro, and I had been planning to travel to the Arrigetch Peaks to attempt the unclimbed west face of Xanadu. ...
On June 25, at approximately 3:25 p.m., a male climber (age 27) fell while leading Black and Tan, a 5.10a trad line in the Fantasy area of Endless Wall. He was approximately 40 feet up the route and took a short fall onto his fourth protection pie...
On the morning of October 28, and with rain forecasted to begin by midday, my girlfriend, Liza Mindemann (age 33), and I (Sam Janis, age 39) decided to get an early start on our third day of a two-week climbing road trip. We were eager to get back...
On July 23, an experienced male climber (age 24) was leading Reaching Conclusions, a 5.10a sport route at Reed’s Creek (near Petersburg, WV). The climber was attempting an awkward move, squatting on a ledge with his left hand on a hold between his...
In March, I finished a new free line on the west face of the Watchman called Surf’s Up (1,000’, IV 5.12-). Jason Nelson and I first spotted the highlight of this potential route while climbing the Central Pillar of the Watchman—surely a crack of t...
Over the course of several years, with myriad different partners, I established a new route on Johnson Mountain (6,120’), just south of the Watchman formation in Zion National Park. True Believers (800’, III+ 5.11 C2) follows an obvious corner sys...
The sound echoed off the cliffs, intermittent yet consistent. I kept hearing it over and over but could not place it. Something natural yet foreign, like whales talking. Matt finally reached me, and I asked if he heard the sound as well.“I don’t h...
Less than a week after my friend Hayden Kennedy’s death, I headed to the Uintas to scout for ice. It had been a good fall and I'd already climbed ice a few days in September. I've been watching Hayden Peak (12,479’) for years, as there are many po...
Tharke Kang (6,710m) is a newly opened summit that sits on the northwest ridge of Hungchi (7,029m). This ridge rises from the Nup La (5,844m) and forms the frontier between Nepal and Tibet. A guided expedition led by Garrett Madison (USA) made the...
At 10:24 a.m. on October 3, I reached the summit of Nangpai Gosum I (7,321m, see editor's note below) all alone. This peak on the Nepal-Tibet border, southwest of Cho Oyu, had been considered the fourth-highest unclimbed mountain in the world. As ...