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 ...
During one of his frequent visits to Yosemite in 1966, Stanford University student Scott Davis and partner emerged from an early ascent of the Lost Arrow Chimney to discover that their friends had forgotten to leave fixed ropes for them to escape ...
He staggered out of the cave sporting well-worn tape gloves, covered in cobwebs, with dirt filling the creases of his eyes and bloody elbows that he had acquired from the heinous body-smearing roof crack of an offwidth. A previous first ascent of ...
Horton Johnson, a member of the American Alpine Club since 1967, died on January 21, 2022. A graduate of Van Nuys (California) High School and the Sparling School of Deep Sea Diving, Horton began mountaineering in 1948 after serving in the armed f...
Maria Boone Cranor—luminary rock climber, co-founder of Black Diamond Equipment, and lecturer in physics at the University of Utah—died of cancer on January 15, 2023, at the Salt Lake City home of her great friends April and Dale Goddard. She was ...