On November 8, Jon Walsh and Marc-André Leclerc (both Canada) completed the first ascent of a traditionally protected mixed route on the Storm Creek Headwall: the Plum (120m, WI6 M7). Storm Creek Headwall is similar to the Stanley Headwall, locate...
In August, Winter Ramos and I ventured into the Leaning Towers, a remote and rarely visited bleb of granite just south of the world-famous Bugaboos. After two friends, Ryan Leary and Evan Reimondo, put up a new route on the east face of Hall Peak ...
In summer 2014, Katie Bono, Hannah Preston, and I went to explore the Leaning Towers. Following logging roads outside of Kimberly, BC, we set off on our adventure. Burdened with 80lb packs, we traveled along a horse trail for 10km. This was the ea...
On August 6, Joanne Mauthner, Jeffrey Bury, and I climbed a new route on the east face of Sharkshead Tower in the Leaning Tower Group. We climbed glacial ice to gain the rock, and from there it was six 30m pitches to the north summit. The hardest ...
In August, Jon Walsh and Michelle Kadatz flew into East Creek Basin and climbed a new route on Wide Awake Tower. The tower is located in the seldom-visited Pigeon Feathers group, and the new, nine-pitch route Electric Funeral (300m, 5.11+) mostly ...
On July 28, Tony McLane and Nathan McDonald climbed a new route on North Howser Tower’s west face: Dodging Deanna (V 5.10). The pair started up the Shooting Gallery and then crossed Seventh Rifle (Jones-Rowell-Qamar, 1971) to gain new ground. The ...
Anyone who has driven the Coquihalla Highway (#5), which runs beneath the south face of Yak Peak, just north of Hope, British Columbia, may know of its literary flare. The engineer of the complex series of bridges and tunnels through Coquihalla Ca...
The leftmost end of the Chief’s north walls is braided with splitter cracks, coarse-grained corners, and ledge systems. Apart from a couple of seeps down low, the Parallels Wall dries out quickly after storms. In 2011, Eric Huges and I redpointe...
The El Niño weather pattern created very unusual conditions in western Canada during the 2014–15 winter season. Powder skiing did not happen and the lower-elevation waterfalls all fell down. Even the stalwart classics that usually remain climbable...
In late July, Brette Harrington, Hannah Preston, Andrew Rennie, and I spent two weeks base-camped out of Sunny Knob. On our first day, Harrington and I established a direct variation to the upper part of Serra 2’s approximately 1,500m south ridge....
The Russian team of Vladislav Dubrovin, Vadim Kalinkin, Konstantin Markevich, and Dmitry Skotnikov completed the first ascent of Svarog (4,960m), the central peak of the north-facing wall at the head of the Ashat Gorge. The team spent 10 days as...
Life is all about balance—at least that’s what you call it when you sacrifice work, relationships, and life maintenance to pursue a silly climbing goal. So when Scotty Nelson and I (two average climbers) eagerly agreed to a hefty training program ...
Late in the afternoon on August 16, Bradley Parker (36) was free soloing the Matthes Crest ridge traverse (III 5.7) when he fell approximately 300 feet to his death. Several climbers witnessed his fall.Earlier in the day, Parker and his girlfriend...
Nate Ricklin: Since first seeing the Cleaver (ca 13,000’) from the northeast ridge of Lone Pine Peak, I was drawn to it—a wide, 850’ tall, white granite wall. I climbed two new routes on the cliff in 2008 along with others from the Pullharder Alpi...
On August 9 my partner Matt and I (both 26) attempted to climb Bear Creek Spire via the North Arête (6 pitches, 5.8) in a single-day, car-to-car push from the trailhead at Mosquito Flats. The weather report called for a 20 percent chance of scatte...
On June 23, two friends and I (Wesley Hartman, 17) were climbing on the east side of Kindergarten Rock. I climbed what I believe was a 5.10 with a safe belay from my partner Trey. When I got to the top I was planning to clean the route and rappel ...
Click the image below to view a PDF of the Statistical Tables from Accidents 2014. The data shown accounts for reported accidents through 2013.
The timing was perfect. A team of female students from the Japanese Alpine Club was planning an expedition to the Himalaya, just as Nepal opened more than 100 new peaks.The women chose three of these newly opened peaks in Mustang: Mansail (Mansail...
On October 17, Benjamin Jones, Jonathan Mancuso, and I left Kathmandu to explore four unclimbed and newly opened peaks in the Upper Mustang region.From Jomsom it took five days to reach a ca 4,875m base camp, and two days later we set a high camp ...
Northwest of Lo Manthang, the Mustang Himal previously was forbidden to both climbers and trekkers. The opening of new peaks in 2014 by the Ministry of Tourism radically changed this situation, and there are now beautiful climbs to be done in ...