Adam Pecan and I met in Li Ming (Liming) and spent October and November establishing free routes to the tops of impressive walls in the main valley described in AAJ 2012 and 2013. The highest wall in the area, at just over 200m, is dubbed the Prim...
On June 13, Len Vanderstar and I set out on an expedition to make the first ascent of Thunder Mountain (9,097’, a.k.a. Mt. Nirvana) without air support. Before 2016, this peak—the highest mountain in the Northwest Territories—had seen five documen...
On June 24, Damien Nicodemi and I climbed a new route on the east face of Flatiron Butte, located to the north of Yosemite National Park in the Hoover Wilderness. The stunning prominence of the face and the solitude of the cirque where the peak is...
On June 5, Neal Harder, Chris LaBounty, and I established the Surge (1,000', 5.8) on the Fortress, in the Castle Rocks area of Sequoia National Park. Our route follows face and flake features to the right of the only other established route, the S...
When you're driving toward Kings Canyon, there are some giant marble buttresses on the left side of the road, but you have to cross the Kings River to get to them. In the case of Boyden Cave Wall, near the popular Boyden Cavern in Giant Sequoia Na...
Between April 1 and 11, Canadian alpinist Marc-André Leclerc and I climbed three new routes in the Valley of the Ten Peaks. We had only recently tied in together for the first time, sharing a rope on March 27, when we climbed the Greenwood-Locke R...
A French “Roc Aventure Programme” team from the Fédération Française de la Montagne et de l’Escalade (FFME) completed a new route on the left side Candameña Canyon, about half an hour from Basaseachi Falls, in October. Six young climbers—Kevin Agl...
On November 29, British climbers Greg Boswell and Nick Bullock were descending in the dark from a reconnaissance of a very difficult mixed route high on the west side of Mt. Wilson, above the Icefields Parkway, when a grizzly bear attacked Boswell...
On August 7, a pair of climbers set out to attempt a new route on the north face of Chancellor Peak. After climbing a considerable distance, they encountered poor conditions and decided to traverse to the northwest ridge to complete their ascent. ...
On August 15, 2014, Will Richardson-Little and I started hiking toward the Grand Sentinel at 7:20 a.m. from the Moraine Lake parking lot. Our objective was to climb the normal route on the south face (4 pitches, 5.9). We had a standard rack, doubl...
On July 24, Banff Dispatch was relayed a 911 call from a climber whose partner had just taken a 15-meter leader fall on the upper cliffs of Castle Mountain. They indicated they were at the bottom of a popular route, Brewer Buttress (III 5.6), on t...
Late in the afternoon of July 28, a lone 30-year-old male was traversing the exposed alpine rock ridge heading southwest from the summit of Mt. Whyte toward Popes Peak. Partway across this traverse, the subject dislodged some loose rocks and fell ...
On April 28, two climbers were descending a single-pitch route known as Aces High on Casino Wall. One of the climbers rappelled off the ends of the rope. He fell about five meters and landed on his back, sustaining a lower back injury described as...
A female climber in her 20s was bouldering at the base of Ha Ling Peak, near Canmore, on March 27. A piece of the boulder detached and crushed her pelvis. She was evacuated from the scene utilizing a wheeled stretcher.ANALYSIS The climber failed t...
At 5:30 a.m. on February 5, two climbers set out to climb Polar Circus, a 700-meter ice climb on Mt. Cirrus. It had snowed lightly overnight and continued to snow during the day. Later in the afternoon, they observed snow sloughing off the steep c...
On February 2, a party of two was ascending a four-pitch WI5 ice route called Sorcerer. Low on the route, one of the climbers was struck by falling ice. He was lowered to the ground and a rescue was requested using a SPOT device. A multi-agency re...
On January 11, three climbers perished after falling nearly the full length of the Central Couloir on the north side of Joffre Peak, east of Pemberton. The couloir is best known as an extreme ski descent, but this trio was ascending the route as a...
Climber 1 and Climber 2 had camped in Garnet Meadows on the night of August 28, with plans to climb the southwest couloir on the Middle Teton the following day. This route is 3rd class and is considered the easiest way to the summit. The two did n...
At 7:30 a.m. on August 22, three women began hiking up the “Apex Trail” from the Lupine Meadows Trailhead in an attempt to climb Teewinot Mountain (12,325 feet). The three climbers, all in their mid-20s, were attempting to ascend the standard east...
On the night of August 15, at about 8:45 p.m., Teton Interagency Dispatch received a cell phone call stating that six persons were stranded in the Stettner Couloir. The subjects had climbed the Petzoldt Ridge and then rappelled into the couloir. T...