A LINE ABOVE THE SKY: A STORY OF MOUNTAINS AND MOTHERHOOD. By Helen Mort (Ebury Press, 2022). Hardcover, 278 pages, $20.74. Beyond the crisp lines of streets and rivers, beyond the typed names and elevation points of cities and mountains, beyond ...
HIGH RISK: CLIMBING TO EXTINCTION. By Brian Hall (Sandstone Press, 2022). Hardcover, 432 pages, £24.99. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, mountaineering in the Greater Ranges changed dramatically. Large, cumbersome, and expensive expeditions w...
NATIVE AIR. By Jonathan Howland (Green Writers Press, 2022). Hardcover, 380 pages, $24.95. Historically, climbing fiction has been an under-developed genre. At least compared with our nonfiction canon. Aside from a few luminaries—James Salter, Da...
UNRAVELED: A CLIMBER’S JOURNEY THROUGH DARKNESS AND BACK. By Katie Brown (Mountaineers Books, 2022). Paperback, 256 pages, $19.95. Once named by Climbing magazine as the “Best Female Climber of the Millennium,” Katie Brown began climbing at the a...
ALL AND NOTHING: INSIDE FREE SOLOING. By Jeff Smoot (Mountaineers Books, 2022). Paperback, 320 pages, $22.95. One of the curiosities of climbing is that for such a literary sport, there hasn’t been a close study of the practice of free soloing. T...
VALLEY OF GIANTS: STORIES FROM WOMEN AT THE HEART OF YOSEMITE CLIMBING. By Lauren DeLaunay Miller (Mountaineers, 2022). Paperback, 240 pages, $21.95. It’s the Center of the Universe, the granite nucleus, the measuring stick by which generations o...
HIDDEN MOUNTAINS: SURVIVAL AND RECKONING AFTER A CLIMB GONE WRONG. By Michael Wejchert (HarperCollins, 2023). Hardcover, 243 pages, $28.99. When we climb mountains, at a certain point we quiet the monsters in our minds and go forth. This basic ye...
At 8:02 a.m. on August 9, NPS climbing rangers received a call from a climber whose partner had fallen off the north side of the ridge just west of Peak 11,840’. This peak sits between Teewinot and Mt. Owen along the Cathedral Traverse. The report...
In late August, Aritza Monasterio (Peru) and I made the first ascent of the southwest face of Caraz II (6,020m), stopping 20m before the summit due to unstable ridge conditions. The face is somewhat hidden from view but had been on Aritza’s radar ...
“One day, while flying over the Himalaya on Google Earth, I spotted a very steep face....” This quote from a story in AAJ 2023 by Paul Ramsden is similar to many the AAJ has published ever since Google Earth became a popular app in the early 2000...
This trip originated through my friendship with the American-Canadian mountaineer Carlos Buhler. Carlos has been visiting Spain for years during his autumn holidays, and we often climb together in the Pyrenees, where I live. Carlos told me about h...
Over 45 days between late October and mid-December 2022, Thomas Auvaro, Léo Billon, Didier Jourdain, Christophe Malangé, and Jordi Noguere—all members of the French Groupe Militaire de Haute Montagne (GMHM)—completed an unprecedented traverse, l...
As often happens in the Patagonian Andes, the Cordón La Llave (45°1’4”S, 72°3’54”W) is one of those forgotten, compact cordilleras whose low height (1,650m) and prominence have left it practically anonymous—unfairly—until very recently. The range...
Aleš Cesen (Slovenia) and I reached Gasherbrum base camp on July 15, with a plan to attempt rarely climbed Gasherbrum III (7,952m). After acclimatizing to 7,000m (Camp 3) on Gasherbrum II’s normal route, we set off for our main objective on Augus...
The climbs featured in the American Alpine Journal don’t occur in a vacuum—they reflect the broader evolution of climbing styles and performance around the world. The following achievements in 2022 provide additional context for the longer rock an...
Like his many friends around the world, I was shocked and dismayed when I heard the news that Ed Webster had suddenly passed away at age 66, on November 22, at his home in Harpswell, Maine. Ed was a giant among climbers, a man who was driven to st...
Partners are everything. The bigger the objective, the more we require excellence in our partners. The more experience we gain, the more we realize that our choice of partners is about more than their technical skill set. Excellence in the mountai...
Jack Miller, 83, passed away on March 1 from serious injuries sustained in an automobile accident, attributed to black ice on the highway between Montrose and Ridgway, Colorado. Like many other avid mountaineers, Jack had the heart of an adventure...
For Dave Dingman, flying, climbing, and medical care were all part of one continuum. Chronologically, climbing came first. In 1956, Dingman and another young Dartmouth student drove their two-door Ford from New Hampshire to the base of the Tetons...
The shout came from far above: “Get that redhead from the Lodge to help you!” It was a command I couldn’t refuse, coming from my hero, Warren Harding. He and Chuck Pratt were high on Yosemite’s Washington Column, fixing ropes and moving slowly up ...