It was an unseasonably cold, wet month in the Winds, according to the locals. And, indeed, during our four-week stay in Titcomb Basin (mid-August to mid-September), we saw only seven days of sunny, somewhat stable weather. And only half of that ti...
Half the fun is getting there—that’s usually true. Reaching the unclimbed northeast buttress of Mt. Despair (7,927’), southwest of the Picket Range, would first require venturing up a brush-choked valley at which even seasoned Cascades aficionados...
Lincoln Peak (9,080’) is located among the “Black Buttes” and is a prominent subsidiary summit of Mt. Baker, less than a mile southwest of Colfax Peak. Steep on all sides, it is the gutted remains of a 500,000-year-old stratovolcano, otherwise kno...
Jason Nelson and I free climbed the Central Pillar/Watchman Direct on the Watchman on October 30. Bryan Bird and Zach Lee had previously freed most of the route, up to a feature called the Red Clam, at 5.11. For us, the remaining three pitches wen...
Last March, I spent my spring break in Zion National Park with Mike Brumbaugh and Andy Raether. Not caring about grades, crowds, or really anything other than having a good time on a sandstone big wall, we set out to find something that piqued our...
On January 8, 2015, Jon Glassberg and I climbed a long new route on the east face of the East Peak of Bridge Mountain. The first six pitches climb a wide crack system visible on the left side of this multi-colored wall and can be seen from the 13-...
Capulin Canyon lies in the heart of the Dome Wilderness, a pristine section of the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument, famous for its Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings. However, no cliff dwellings exist in this area. The ...
On October 17 Chris Guyer and I went on an early morning recon run in the northern part of the central Beartooths. About five miles in we discovered a brilliant vein of ice dripping down a prominent north-facing wall. On October 19, Tanner Callend...
The year 1998 marked my first trip to Cooke City, Montana. I had been living in Bozeman for about a year, as a student at Montana State University, and had just discovered the mind-blowing sport of ice climbing. Hyalite Canyon had impassable roads...
On the last weekend in June I met up with Ian Cavanaugh and Peter Hekan to take care of some unfinished business at the Elephant’s Perch. It was my third trip in twice as many years, and we finally managed to free-climb Boomer’s Story (V 5.13-). B...
The growing popularity of ice climbing was a source of increasing frustration before I discovered the potential for mixed first ascents in the San Juan Mountains. In January–February 2015, Grant Kleeves and I dedicated ourselves to trying a new ro...
In October, Ben Collett and I added two new routes to the Silhouette Buttress (ca 13,000’) on the Mt. Evans massif, both located left of last year’s route Silhouette (AAJ 2014). After trying many different options to approach this buttress once t...
In October, Mike Brumbaugh and Rob Pizem climbed a possible new route/variation on the Great White Wall, located on the eastern side of the Long Draw: Any Color You Like As Long As It’s Black (12 pitches, 5.11+ PG).The Great White Wall has a numbe...
This mission started in April when Josh Wharton invited me to the Black Canyon’s South Chasm View Wall to have a look at freeing an old, obscure aid route called Harpua (V 5.11 A1, Gunther-Schoepflin, 1994). The line starts just right of the infam...
After staring at the Lost Brother formation for weeks on end while soloing routes on El Capitan, I finally ventured over in May to explore. Lost Brother hadn’t seen a new route in a decade; however, I quickly found a line following a stark white f...
After staring at the obscure shady buttress on the left side of the Glacier Point Apron for three years while new-routing on Liberty Cap, Steve Bosque and I decided to hike up in Summer 2013 and check out the options for a new route.We chose a dir...
Last spring a team of jokesters with positive attitudes and some big-wall experience ganged up in Camp 4 for early morning libations. Richie Copeland was on the scene with his newly spray-painted chrome helmet and haul bag. A passerby couldn’t hel...
Climbing around Yosemite Valley has been tremendously rewarding over the past few years, as obscure walls have delivered excellent new routes and solitary experiences. In the spring, Steve Bosque, Josh Mucci, and I established another of these rou...
Cheyne Lempe and Ethan Pringle established the Constant Gardener (V 5.11+ R A3) on the north face of Higher Cathedral Rock, from September 12–13. The approximately 1,000’ climb ascends 600’ of new terrain before joining the Chouinard-Kamps-Pratt R...
From June 4–5, Cheyne Lempe and Everett Phillips completed a new route up Sentinel Rock: Short Haul Bait (V 5.8 A2+). The route climbs seams, chimneys, and corners on the left edge of Sentinel’s sheer northeast face for approximately 1,000’. Much ...