The Pumasillo group has the most extensive collection of glaciated peaks in the Cordillera Vilcabamba, yet only a handful of ascents have occurred here. The west ridge of Pumasillo (5,991m) was climbed by five expeditions between 1957 and 1974, an...
On March 9, Eduardo Baca, Yjeguel Camasa, and I climbed Nevado Bonanta (ca 5,300m a.k.a. Bonomia), a large, rounded glacial summit on the ridge extending west from Nevado Veronica (5,893m). Our route up the east ramp had a short, easy, but very ex...
In April, Eduardo Baca, Yjeguel Camasa, Coqui Galvez, and I climbed a probable new route up the east face of Nevado Chainopuerto (5,650m), an outlying peak of Nevado Sahuasiray (5,818m). I had seen this peak a few times from other summits in the a...
On August 13 and 14, Rolf Larson and I made the first ascent of the steep and intimidating north face of South Hozomeen Mountain (8,003’). This rarely climbed peak is among the steepest in the Lower 48. We’d gawked at it from neighboring North Hoz...
At the end of August, Esther Baum, Stephanie Graßl (team doctor), Marie Hofmann, Veronika Krieger, Maria Pilarski, Susanne Süßmeier, Franziska Wiele, and I (team trainer) traveled to the Pamir in southeast Tajikistan as the last stage of the Germa...
In July, five members of the Cracow Mountaineering Club visited the upper Darshaidara (Dara Darshai) Valley, located in the far west of the Shakhdara Range in the southwest Pamir. After two days of trekking from Darshai village in the Wakhan Corri...
From August 21 to September 13, four members of the Austrian Young Alpinists Group—Maximilian Reiss, Manuel Steiger, Roman Weilguny (leader), and Michael Zwölfer—and two mentors, Alex Blümel and me, climbed in the Komarova Valley, east of Kyzyl As...
On my first trip to the Tetons, in 1955, I met three already iconic climbers: Dick Emerson, the climbing/rescue ranger, and Willi Unsoeld and Dick Pownall, both Exum guides. I never imagined the four of us would reconnect eight years later as memb...
On September 17 a multi-national team of three pairs—Tito Arosio and Luca Vallata (Italy), Peter Linney (Ireland) and James Monypenny (U.K.), and Tom Nichols (U.K.) and Rob Partridge (New Zealand)—assembled at Litang, the last outpost in the wild ...
On June 28, Andres Marin and I drove from Cusco to Ollantaytambo. From here we continued up a paved highway (28B) that goes up a steep valley, with seemingly endless switchbacks, to a pass called Puerto Malaga and then down the other side to the l...
Rising to 4,509m above the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, Mt. Wilhelm is the highest in the country. Due to its glaciated past, Mt. Wilhelm comes with scenic lakes and several steep rock faces—the latter not covered in the dense rainforest that ...
After my brother Tomas Franchini and I spent one week in El Chaltén with bad weather, we decided in late January 2017 to move north toward Perito Moreno National Park. After six hours in the car, we slept at Gobernador Gregores and the next day co...
In the winter of 2016, Didier Jourdain presented a photo of Siulá Grande’s east face to his teammates of the Groupe Militaire de Haute Montagne (GMHM). In 2003, Didier had visited the Cordillera Huayhuash and climbed a wonderful new route on Jiris...
It’s never easy to find a fine new line, especially when your requirements border close to arrogance: unclimbed, vertical, sunny, with good rock, and, of course, all free. However, we managed to find a jewel in Peru, realizing a new route up the n...
Cerro Castillo (2,675m) is one of the iconic mountains of the Aysén Region in Northern Patagonia. Two new routes were climbed on the peak in the austral summer of 2016.On January 22–23, Sebastian Rojas, Diego Señoret, and Claudio Vicuña climbed Ps...
In March and April, as part of the multi-objective expedition “Incognita Patagonia,” Ibai Rico (Spain) and I (USA, based in U.K.) spent several weeks in southernmost Tierra del Fuego. We based out of the sailboat Northanger. Among the expedition’s...
French climbers Jérôme Chazelas and Thomas Quillet reported reaching the summit of Tirich Mir (7,708m), the highest peak in the Hindu Kush, in July, via the normal route (the 1967 Czechoslovak Route up the northwest face via the upper Tirich Glaci...
Czech mountaineer Marek Holecek was back for his fourth attempt at a new route on the southwest face of Gasherbrum I, this time with Ondra Mandula. The pair first acclimatized on the normal route, reaching 7,500m. They set off for a summit attempt...
Shortly after daylight on September 22, Chris Knight (Canada) and I left our base camp at 4,800m in the valley that leads northeast to the Chearoco Glacier (between Chearoco and Chachacomani). We gained 500m and then scrambled along the west ridge...
Rodrigo Lobo and I climbed a partial new route on Pico del Norte (6,050m) in the Illampu group in July. After waiting a day at our base camp because of snowy weather, we started up the left side of the northwest face by climbing the initial corner...