A system to the right of Hobo’s Haven on Snowpatch Spire’s Tom Egan Wall had long been eyed from Applebee Camp. Cody Lank and I succeeded in climbing this new line in 2012: East Columbian (4 pitches, 5.12).The blank first pitch was the key to unlo...
In August 2013, Evan Reimondo and I spent seven days in the remote Leaning Tower group in the southern Purcell Mountains. [The Leaning Tower group is located south of the Bugaboos and is home to impressive granite walls on Hall Peak (a.k.a. Leanin...
The steep, 365m-high, south-facing wall directly above Victor Lake, 15km west of Revelstoke, B.C., got its first route in 2007, when Dean Flick from Revelstoke completed the Mission after nearly 10 years of work. Since then the featured quartzite ...
In July, Ben Kunz, Tim Halder, and I enjoyed nine days of impeccable weather in the Waddington Range. Our primary objective was the McNerthney Pillar (McNerthney-McNerthney,1986) on the northern flanks of Mt. Waddington.Our pilot, Mike King, allow...
I first became aware of Mt. Bute several years ago, when a team of three climbers from Squamish succeeded in establishing a monstrous 50-pitch ridge climb: School of Rock (Kay-Martinello-Sinnes, AAJ 2010). After their trip they noted the free-clim...
After a couple of slow years, there seems to be an upswing of interest in new routes in southwestern B.C., including several new winter lines.In late February 2013, Bruce Kay and Damien Kelly climbed Fire Ball (500m, WI5 M5) on the west face of Mt...
In early April, Jonathan Crabtree, Charles Parr, Eli Sturm, and I explored a portion of Canada’s St. Elias Range, located within Kluane National Park. Our primary objective was the south face of Lowell Peak (11,910’, known as Pinnacle W4 on some m...
On May 7, pilot Paul Swanstrom flew Derek Buckle and me from Haines to ca 3,700’ on the lower Seward Glacier close to the Yukon border. The week prior, storms had broken precipitation records for much of neighboring southeast Alaska. Our objective...
On April 10 an eight-member expedition from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Alpine Club, led by Lim Il-jin, arrived in Phu. Here they hired a local guide to lead them to base camp (5,050m) on the Bharchapk Glacier. Lugula is the highest p...
The Organ Mountains are about 60 miles north of El Paso, Texas in southern New Mexico. The history of climbing in the Organs is vague prior to the 1940s, when a group of German rocket scientists began climbing technical routes. Royal Robbins estab...
During the summer and fall of 2013, I ferreted out two new lines on the monolith of Big Rock Candy Mountain while researching an upcoming guidebook. In June, Greg Miller and I put up the 11-pitch route Nicaraguan Nut Butter (1,300’, 5.9) ground-up...
There are few places anywhere in the world where you can approach multi-pitch alpine ice and mixed climbs with just 20 minutes’ walking. For better or worse, the Pikes Peak toll road delivers just that. Most of the classic rock and ice routes on t...
When Jacob Neathawk and I climbed a new start to the southwest corner on the Petit Grepon in Rocky Mountain National Park in September 2012, I realized that there was plenty of untapped terrain farther up the Sky Pond basin. So, in June 2013, Josh...
In August, Tommy Caldwell and Joe Mills redpointed the first 5.14 route on the Diamond on Longs Peak (14,259’), free-climbing the complete Dunn-Westbay (1972). After a number of days of work, Caldwell led the route free on August 21 in four rope-s...
Most people who climb on the Black Wall in summer can’t help but notice the seeps that prevent good rock climbing between the route Roofer Madness and the standard rappel route. The problem with climbing these seeps when they are frozen is that th...
During a warm weather window in early October, I completed the first ground-up free ascent of a new eight-pitch route on the Black Wall. Prior to the ascent, I had cleaned the route from the top down and worked the pitches with a Mini Traxion. Hig...
In July, Bill Grasse, Ben Kiessel, and Matt Pickren established Black in Action (8 pitches, III 5.10+ R) on a prominent pillar below the Cross Fissures Overlook, which is located along the South Rim of the canyon. Six pitches gain the top of the p...
Steve House and various partners established two new routes on Camp Bird Road during the 2013-2014 winter season. The first route, Goodnight Irene (900’, IV M5/6 PG13), was climbed by House and Ian Yurdin in November. The five-pitch route was esta...
In mid-August, Justin Griffin and Kyle Dempster went into the Deep Lake area to explore Haystack Mountain and work on free climbing the upper part of an old Jeff Lowe aid line at the southern end of the wall. Steve Bechtel had previously tried to ...
The south face of Wolfshead is the sunniest and cleanest wall in the Cirque of the Towers. Armed with the experience of opening earlier routes on this wall, Brandon Gust and I packed a single rope, four steel and three nylon brushes, and the requi...