Mt. Silliman (11,188’) is a popular summit for peak baggers in Sequoia National Park. This is for good reason: It has a commanding view, is accessible as a day hike, and is on the Sierra Peaks Section list. In addition to its easier scrambles, the...
In November 2013, I went to Oman with Andrea Migliano, planning a three-week climbing trip. We rented a car and drove to Jabal Misht, the most famous mountain in the country. We hiked along the huge south face and checked a line on the right side,...
On August 4, Natalia Martinez and I, as part of our Uncharted Project (which has focused mostly on the Cordillera Darwin and Cordillera Sarmiento in southern Chile), flew into Kluane National Park. We landed on the Seward Glacier close to Mt. Sain...
On October 11, at approximately 7:15 p.m., several 911 calls came in to the City of Boulder Communications Center, stating that someone was yelling for help in the area of the First Flatiron. Temperatures at that time were in the low 50s (F), with...
On June 6 a climber was struck in the lower right leg by a large falling block while climbing Missionary’s Crack (5.10) . This was roughly in the area where a major rockfall occurred in August 2009. Two Kananaskis Public Safety personnel were heli...
Robert Adams, Tom Adams, Steve Kennedy, and leader Andy Nisbet (all U.K.), and Bill McConachie and I (both U.S.) visited an east-west side valley of one branch of the Darcha-Mayar Valley, immediately north of Ramjak (6,318m). Our objectives were t...
Every year more blank spots on the map are filled and more peaks are crisscrossed with new routes and variations. Inevitably, many climbers decry the disappearance of exploration and adventure in our world. But exploration is only evolving, not ...
Letters from Chamonix: Stories and a Novella. By David Stevenson. Imaginary Mountain Surveyors (Canada), 2014. 230 pages. Paperback, $24.95.Editor's note: Longtime AAJ books editor David Stevenson’s collection of short fiction won the Banff Mounta...
The Call of the Ice: Climbing 8,000 Meter Peaks in Winter. By Simone Moro, Foreword by Ed Viesturs, translated by Monica Meneghetti. Mountaineers Books, 2014. 224 pages. Paperback, $19.95. Simone Moro (Italy) is a remarkable high-altitude speciali...
Denali's Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America's Wildest Peak. By Andy Hall. E.P Dutton & Co. (Penguin Group), 2014. 272 pages. Hardcover, $27.95.Blind dates don’t often work out well, but they only last a night. Climbing with peopl...
Cold Feet: Stories of a Middling Climber on Classic Peaks and Among Legendary Mountaineer. By David Pagel. Self-published, 2014. 384 pages. Paperback, $19.95.There are only a few climbing writers whose work I genuinely look forward to diving into ...
One Day as a Tiger: Alex MacIntyre and the Birth of Light and Fast Alpinism. By John Porter. Vertebrate Publishing (U.K.), 2014. 230 pages. Hardcover, £20. Late at night on an expedition to Afghanistan in 1977, John Porter gazed through a hole in ...
The Calling: A Life Rocked by Mountains. By Barry Blanchard. Patagonia Books, 2014. 440 pages. Hardcover, $27.95. The Calling: A Life Rocked by Mountains is Barry Blanchard’s story of rising out of what would have been a soon-to-be- forgott...
High Summits: 370 Famous Peak First Ascents and Other Significant Events in Mountaineering History. By Frederick L. Wolfe. Hugo House Publishers, 2013. 703 pages. Hardcover, $49.95. This massive history is organized by continent and chronology. Th...
The Tower: A Chronicle of Climbing and Controversy on Cerro Torre. By Kelly Cordes. Patagonia Books, 2014. 400 pages. Hardcover, $27.95.The Tower is not only the definitive book about Cerro Torre—it’s also one of the finest examples of a subgenre ...
In 1953, when Bob Craig joined the famed Anglo-American expedition to K2, most mountaineers in the United States were amateurs. Climbing mountains was a seasoning that complemented another life, in which they pursued their big dreams and goals. Bo...
Click here to open a spreadsheet of all accidents on the Nose of El Capitan reported in Accidents from 1973 through 2013, with links to the relevant articles.
On September 26 I fell about 55 feet while lowering from a session on the Madness (5.13c), which I was hoping might be my 1,500th route in the Red River Gorge. Once I realized I was falling, I cursed, straightened up, got my feet underneath me, an...
Scott Sederstrom (44) fell to his death on March 13 when a bolt failed on Life in Electric Larvae Land (5.10b) at Silent Pillar Wall in Owens River Gorge. When Sederstrom did not return that evening, his fiancée drove to the Lower Gorge parking lo...
“We were born too late. Roper’s already been here. We’re just picking up his scraps,” Tim Halder mused as we gazed up at the unclimbed south face of the Himmelhorn (7,880’). Maybe so, but neither he nor anyone else had ventured onto the big face i...