In 2008, Kathrin Münzel and I reached the eastern end of the Wakhan Corridor and Oxus Snow Lake (AAJ 2009), and subsequently several expeditions followed this pioneering trip; Alan Halewood's parties (AAJ 2011 and AAJ 2014), Bartek Tofel's Polish ...
The Bond: Survival on Denali and Mount Huntington. Simon McCartney. Mountaineers Books, 2016. Paperback, 304 pages, $19.95.Standing beneath the north face of Alaska’s Mt. Huntington, one cannot help but feel an overwhelming sense of terrifying awe...
During the summer of 2010, a series of violent acts against foreigners in northern Afghanistan led our team to explore an area of the Rushan Range in Tajikistan instead of the Hindu Kush. We drove from Dushanbe to Khorog, from which I hoped we cou...
What to do next? This question lingered in my mind after I completed all the 8,000ers without supplementary oxygen. Like everyone else, I don’t have a compass that keeps me directed on the right line to follow. So I thought about my lifelong passi...
Having only soared around the unclimbed mountain on Google Earth, it felt wild to cross a river into the winter-shadowed valley beneath its north face. The mountain was what I called Bhandar Lek (6,024m), what some locals call Dhaule, after the na...
On January 15, 2017, a British military group commemorating Henry Worsley and comprising Alex Brazier, Chris Brooke, Jamie Facer-Childs, Alun George, Lou Rudd, and Ollie Stoten made the first ascent of Roberts Massif (ca 2,700m), while returning f...
After summiting Mt. Vinson on January 4, 2017, Larry Holmgren (USA), Nate Opp (USA), Liam Suckling (Australia), and I went old-school. Instead of flying back to the Union Glacier, we spent two weeks traveling with skis and sleds, descending the Br...
In December, a ski mountaineering party led by Bruce Goodlad (U.K.) was dropped off at Tarrada Point on Brabant Island. They skied up to a base camp in front of Mt. Parry (2,520m). The following day, with 50-knot winds over the summits, they skied...
The South Platte region of Colorado has a strong history of scrappy rock climbing and a staunch ethic of bolting new routes on lead. So when my partner Dave Montgomery and I set out to climb the west face of the iconic Cynical Pinnacle, we knew ...
Zowie is similar in shape and size to the classic RMNP spire the Petit Grepon. The only thing Zowie has lacked in comparison to the ultra-popular Petit has been a truly classic route up its south face. In June, Dede Humphrey and I climbed Magic in...
In a superb effort, Josh Wharton completed the three hardest free routes in the Park in one year: Sarchasm (5.14a, a sport route below Longs Peak), the Honeymoon is Over (5.13c) and Dunn-Westbay Direct (5.14a), both on the Diamond. Wharton didn’t ...
Jeff Dickson and Tobias Link climbed the north ridge of the North Tooth, one of a pair of limestone towers just north of Mt. Wardle in the Vermilion Range. Their 600m route, climbed during a two-day outing in May, went at D 5.10a/b.– Dougald MacDo...
On August 1, Mark Klassen, Tim Johnson, Margie Smith, and Larry Stanier completed a new route up the northwest ridge (Napsihu Ridge) of the Finger in 12 pitches plus scrambling (AD 5.8). The route has some bolt protection and good rappel anchors, ...
In May 2015, Steven Kovalenko and Maury Perrault climbed a 1,400m mixed line up the northwest face of Hungabee Mountain (3,490m) in a 30-hour round trip from Lake O’Hara (16 hours up, 14 hours down). Mordor (V 5.6 WI4 M4) topped out on the north r...
In the summer of 2016, Joshua Lavigne, Marc-André Leclerc and I spent six weeks in the fjordlands of eastern Baffin Island, establishing two new routes on Great Sail Peak (ca 1,500m). Our journey began on June 21, when we set off from the communit...
Jack Grinsted, Dave McKinney, and I, from New Zealand, established a new route, Huffin & Puffin (12 pitches, 7a A3), on the iconic Trøllkonufingur, a huge pillar along the coast of Vágar, one of the 18 Faroe Islands. The pillar previously had ...
From January 11–26, 2017, Marek Raganowicz (Poland) made the first solo winter ascent of any route on Trollveggen (the Troll Wall) when he reached the top of Suser Gjennom Harryland (18 pitches to east pillar, Norwegian 6 A3, Hagen-Ostbo, 1996). T...
On June 17 and 18, Mišo Bado and I made the first ascent of Corona on the south face of Jastrabia veža in Slovakia. After a pitch of UIAA VIII, climbing through an overhang and a corner, with two bolts, the crux pitch overhangs 4m in its 38m lengt...
Austrian climbers Hansjörg Auer, Alex Blümel, and David Lama attempted one of the great unclimbed prizes of the Nepal Himalaya, the southeast pillar of Annapurna III (7,555m), in early May. They approached base camp by helicopter, and after three ...
A few years ago, Daniel Jeffcoach and I spotted an unnamed and apparently unclimbed formation above North Dome. The approach starts from the Road’s End parking lot, and to our surprise it took no longer than three to four hours to reach the base. ...