“Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature,” said Pierre Elliot Trudeau, a past prime minister of C...
I cracked open a PBR tallboy. Before me was a massive pile of food, climbing gear, camping equipment, four bottles of whisky, herbal assistance, and a 40-pound Costco freezer bag full of baby-back ribs, steaks, and bacon. “This should be an enjoya...
From August 31 to September 12, Stacy Bare, Maury Birdwell, Ted Hesser, and I went to Angola to sample the climbing and do some nonprofit solar-energy installations through the Honnold Foundation. The climbing exceeded expectations, particularly i...
In May, Carter Stritch and I climbed a pair of possible new routes in the Ruth Gorge, in addition to repeating routes on Mooses Tooth and Mt. Johnson.On May 1 we climbed the southwest face of Peak 7,400’. A couloir splits the right side of this fa...
In June, Scott Peters and Kristin Arnold of St. Elias Alpine Guides, Ben Iwrey, and I made possible first ascents of two peaks in the Wrangell Mountains, near Mt. Blackburn. We were flown into the area by pilot Paul Claus after waiting for a wea...
The summits of the Neacola Mountains are not as high as in the nearby Revelation Mountains or Central Alaska Range, but the glaciers are much lower, meaning the walls still reach heights of 1,000m. With three different projects in mind in the Neac...
From March 20–22, Chad Diesinger, Jason Stuckey, and I made the first ascent of Blue Collar Beatdown (V WI4 M4 65°) on the northeast face (right shoulder) of Mt. Dickey. The route is located to the left of the Byrch-McNeill ice flow (AAJ 2004).Wit...
On April 18, Jon Griffith and I were dropped by helicopter on the upper Gillam Glacier in the Hayes Range. This beautifully harsh set of mountains is less conducive to climbing than the granite ranges farther west—ultimately that is their charm.Up...
Starting in September 2014, Sam Bendroth and I began establishing and free climbing a route on the 1,300’ seaside cliff Blow Me Down. Our route is just right of Lucifer’s Lighthouse (AAJ 2007) and shares its initial 20’. On this initial trip, we f...
Dylan Johnson and I drove to Mt. Slesse on March 6, 2015, hoping to climb the oft-attempted but unclimbed Heart of Darkness on Slesse’s north side. The Heart of Darkness is a very obvious feature: a giant gash that goes straight up between the Nor...
In May, Toshiyuki Yamada and I climbed a new route on the northeast face of Storm Mountain (3,191m) after first repeating the Wild Thing on Mt. Chephren and Greenwood-Locke on Mt. Temple, earlier that month. Storm Mountain is located on the contin...
In mid-October, Toshiyuki Yamada and I climbed a new route on the northeast face of South Howser Tower. The best and worst things of attempting a new line are the unknowns. I constantly ask myself: Should we move on? Would I be able to find a spot...
Over the last decade or so, the 500m east face of Snowpatch Spire has been transformed into one of the finest alpine free climbing walls in North America. Formerly best known as an aid-climbing venue, it is now covered in free routes—mostly diffic...
In early May, Cheyne Lempe and I traveled to the Sam Ford Fjord of Baffin Island and established a new route on Great Cross Pillar: Deconstructing Jenga (900m, 5.9+ A3+).Three days of travel, one canceled flight, two tent bivies in town, plus a fi...
In February, Jim Taylor and I established a beautiful line he’d scoped out the year before, on a feature known as El Perfil in the Amphitheater. The route follows a crack system up to a short roof and then continues up a very prominent arête.Our i...
From March 20–22, Roberto Piriz and I climbed a new route on a rocky satellite peak of Cerro Tolosa (5,432m), known as Pico Los Zondinos (4,850m). [See AAJ 2014 for more info about Cerro Tolosa.] We started our journey from the town of Las Cuevas....
While free climbing El Capitan’s Golden Gate (VI 5.13b, Huber-Huber, AAJ 2001) in 2009, I spotted a system of beautiful cracks and corners leading out the left side of the massive, heart-shaped recess in the middle El Cap’s southwest face. The s...
On May 24, a climber in his early 20s was leading Rye Crisp (5.8) while his sister belayed him. According to his sister, he was an experienced climber who leads up to 5.11. Because the climb was relatively easy for him, he had not placed any prote...
On April 30 I was leading Diagonal (5.6) on the Small Cliff at Ragged Mountain. I fell from about halfway up, at a point where the diagonaling crack offsets to the right. I had put in a cam about 10 feet up and then a nut in a not-great placement....
I heard a scream and saw my rope falling below me. It was August 23, the day I almost died. After putting in six hours of rock climbing, we were ready to pack up and leave the Tan Corridor. I (Asha Nanda, 21) started up the climb called Reef On It...