This fatal accident on February 6 was not witnessed, so many details remain unknown. Jared Townsley (31) was reported overdue from a solo climb on the South Side Route. He was last seen by other climbers descending near Crater Rock. A search t...
Steffen Machulka (49) was a member of the three-person German climbing team “Die Bahner.” On May 18 the team was on the eighth day of the expedition and was moving from the 14,200-foot camp to the 17,200-foot camp on the West Buttress. The tea...
On September 18, Jacob van Almelo (25) was climbing the route Tigger (5.10a/b) when he fell at the crux move. His 30-foot fall resulted in several injuries. His belayer did not catch the fall, but protection pulling out may also h...
On August 29 I received a call from Siskiyou County SAR, Celeste Fowler, stating that a SPOT device had been set off on the northeast side of the mountain, near the 10,000-foot level on the Hotlum-Wintun route. The signal came from a commercial...
On February 5, while ascending the South Side Route, Meg Coker (35) lost her footing at about 10,500-foot elevation. She was unable to self-arrest and slid about 200 feet. She suffered multiple rib fractures and a collapsed lung. Nearby teams (...
Late in the day on January 15, a male lead climber was attempting to climb the Second Flatiron, a low 5th-class climb with many possible variations. The leader climbed a full rope length and could not find an adequate anchor. He untied from the...
On June 16 a middle-aged climber with novice mountaineering skills, Chinyet Lin, was reported missing after an attempted one-day climb up the Avalanche Gulch route. Lin was part of a “meet up” group off the Internet. The party was high on the m...
On February 18 a female ice climber (49) fell while rappelling during a guided ice climb with her husband and daughter. She was approximately 20 to 30 feet above the ground when she slipped and swung sideways into a protruding ice formation. S...
On April 20 a party of three Japanese climbers set up a rappel on the route Shaken Not Stirred on the Mooses Tooth. The rappel anchor was a sling around a horn of rock. This anchor failed, resulting in one member of the team, Yudai Sato (24), ...
On April 21 a man (22) attempted to glissade down Avalanche Gulch below Redbanks. As the snow was too firm, he lost control and slid for 1,500 feet. He suffered abrasions and cuts. Rangers spoke to the man over the phone and met with him on...
Midday on January 15, Jack Roberts (58), a renowned ice climber and alpinist, died on the 400-foot Bridal Veil Falls (WI5). Jack was leading the second pitch, a long, steep pillar on the right side of the falls, when he fell 60 feet, breaking h...
On February 4, while ascending the South Side Route, Andy Kim (age unknown) stopped at the 9,500-foot elevation to put on his crampons. As he was leveling a platform for the transition, he slipped and slid about 500 feet. He lost his ice axe wh...
The Bible says “do not be afraid,” or a variation of the same, 366 times. That’s because the writers did not look far enough into the future to know what it would be like to climb with Layton Kor. There are individuals who seem fated, or p...
CANADA We thank Canada for submitting reports from Alberta and British Columbia for this year. Robert Chisnall, an ACC member from Kinsgston, Ontario, was responsible for editing the narratives. UNITED STATES This is the second y...
I dreamed I was in the Fisher Towers, walking on a ledge a couple of hundred feet up. I kept stumbling into pieces of angle iron bolted to the rock. These were, I realized, anchors. Peering below, I saw what seemed to be climbs every few fee...
DEEP IN the southwest corner of Alaska, the Revelation Mountains, like their biblical namesake, comprise the final chapter of the Alaska Range. These magnificent peaks are the last major folds of earth to rise above the western lowlands that str...
International rock climbing classification systems are shown in the chart at the right, and below is a comparison of Alpine, Ice, Snow, Aid, and Commitment grading systems. This chart is designed to be used with the American Alpine Journal to ...
In February 2013, I was on my way to California after fishing during the winter on the Bering Sea, and I called my good friend Paul Byrne to bail on our spring trip to the Alaska Range. Luckily, during that same phone call, we agreed on a ne...
There are certain skylines wilder and far more beautiful than the sum of their parts: the Fitz Roy massif in Patagonia, the Aiguilles of Chamonix, and the Trango group in Pakistan. These are places where each mountain seems positioned to comple...
Boris Avdeev Diana C. Dailey Bill E. Forrest Richard M. Gnagy Ben Horne Dale L. Johnson Ann D. Middleton Theodore Nicolai Roger Payne John J. Roberts Steve Romeo Gil Weiss Michael Ybarra