On September 3, Peter Kettering, 61, was starting up what he believed was Revelations (5.9). In fact, he was mistakenly leading the harder climb Irreverence (5.10a). Just before clipping the first bolt, Kettering fell 12 to 15 feet to the ground. ...
On June 23, Bryan Simon (39) was bitten by a bat (species unknown) while climbing Pet Cemetery, a 5.11b sport route at the Catwalk Cliff of the Lower Gorge. After clipping the fifth bolt, the climber placed a hand under a flake on the left side of...
Keith Kowalczykowski, 30, was leading Hesitation Blues, a 5.10b face and finger crack, on April 18. He clipped the route’s two bolts, at approximately 15 and 25 feet, then placed a small cam at 30 to 35 feet. He placed a fourth piece (type unknown...
On March 14, a large group of climbers from the Yale University Climbing Club was climbing at Smith Rock. Two climbers headed up Voyage of the Cow Dog, a three- pitch 5.9. One of them (age 20) was following the third pitch when he dislodged a micr...
A husband and wife team of experienced climbers, ages 32 and 29, were attempting to summit via the Jefferson Park Glacier on November 29. The two had to maneuver around a crevasse field and past an area of rockfall, and they encountered much hard ...
Casey Ferguson, age 27, was struck by a boulder while descending a chute just below the summit on June 14. The microwave-size rock fractured her lower leg. Three other companions managed to dodge the boulder, after a climber above them yelled, “Ro...
While descending the Mazama Chute on January 31, a roped team of two (ages 39 and 43) fell and suffered ankle and lower leg fractures. It is believed the upper climber lost her footing during a rest break and slid toward the lower climber. Rather...
On January 7, while descending the South Side Route, at about 9,700 feet, Edward Trompke, 62, fell and slid about 200 feet, injuring his shoulder. His son, climbing with him, alerted authorities with a 911 call, saying the fall was caused by a loo...
On July 7, Transylvania County Rescue Team received a call at 3:36 p.m. regarding a fall with injury at the South Side of Looking Glass Rock. Wilderness First Responders were on scene when I (Karsten Delap) arrived at 4:08 p.m. to find the patient...
After completing one climb on September 17, Eli Huneycutt (20) and Will Apple (36) began climbing Zoo View (5.7+), a classic two-pitch route. Huneycutt successfully led the first pitch to the Crow’s Nest belay ledge. Apple began the second pitch, ...
At the Mohonk Preserve there were 27 climbing-related incidents in 2015, including both bouldering and soloing. Two required high-angle rescues, and 12 required steep-angle extrications. In many cases, common safety measures might have lessened th...
On Labor Day I planned to lead Thin Slabs for the first time, having only followed the climb once before. We wanted to do the direct start (5.7) and the challenging direct finish (5.7+). I made it through the first hard moves on pitch one clean, w...
On August 17, a 23-year-old male climber fell while leading the second pitch of Diagonal (5.8, seven pitches) on Wallface, a 700-foot cliff five miles from the trailhead. The leader had gotten off-route on the broken and bushy second pitch (5.5, w...
On March 7, three climbers with one to five years of experience each—Patrick Keatly (19), Travis Grimes (22), and Robert Weddell (23)—scrambled four or five miles along a frozen creekbed to attempt an unnamed peak in Poudre Canyon, north of the Cr...
STEVE: My dear friend and longtime cook and guide Ghulam Rasool sat next to me as our jeep rolled into the village of Hushe. It had been eight years since we had last seen each other, and I was happy to be reunited for another adventure. This wo...
In El Chaltén’s Hostal Del Lago, the wall of the common room is pasted with maps of the vast Southern Patagonian Ice Field, and it is quite normal to observe climbers staring at the wall and daydreaming of windless days on a rime-capped summit, wh...
On Sunday, August 30, a climber fell 40 feet near the top of Double Vee, a popular but tricky-to-protect 5.9 at the Barber Wall on Cathedral Ledge. While he had four pieces of protection in, all but one (a number three Camalot ten feet above the g...
Two climbers chose Whitehorse’s classic Standard Route (5.5) as an introduction to multi-pitch climbing. They set off the morning of August 29 equipped with a traditional rack and a single rope. At around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, the lead climber ...
I first visited the Bugaboos in 2008 with under-the-radar alpine legend Chris Brazeau. Braz, a low-key, wide-smiling local, knew all the tricks to help an alpine climbing neophyte like myself. After driving up the bumpy logging road for about an h...
At 5 a.m. on February 15, Kate Matrosova, 32, of New York City, was dropped off at the Appalachia parking lot by her husband. She planned a one-day winter traverse of the northern Presidential Range, a technically moderate mountaineering objective...