Diego Nakamura and partners have climbed many spires in the Sosneado Group over the past few years. The zone lies on the east flank of Cerro de los Pantanos, southeast of Cerro el Palomo (4,850m), along the Chile-Argentina border. In March, Lucas ...
In early November, Rob Smith and I traveled to Cerro San Lorenzo (3,706m), Patagonia’s second-tallest peak. While the Chaltén massif to the south is about ease of access to amazing climbing, San Lorenzo is about big adventure, with difficult uncli...
Pirámide Alejandro Lewis (4,800m) is a fine, rocky pyramid that is part of the Nevado de Cachi and is named after a deceased climber. From Las Pailas, the approach is made by hiking up the Quebrada de la Hoyada. In November, Matias Cruz and Facund...
Mt. Namuli is located in the northeast of Mozambique, in the Zambezia province, and is a striking granite inselberg with twin summits topping out at 2,418m. In May, Kate Rutherford and I completed the first technical route up the mountain. Our 12-...
The east face of the Nelion (5,188m) is surely the steepest and most impressive big wall on the Mt. Kenya (5,199m) massif. When Lena Hölzler, Niels Delenk, and I (all Germany) visited in August 2007, our goal was to establish a direct free climb t...
On the last day of my junior year of high school, I packed up the car and headed for Yosemite Valley. I hoped to make it up El Capitan as many times as possible over the summer. The previous summer I had learned how to aid and big-wall climb and m...
Chris Thomas and I completed the first ascent of Seraph (8,540’) on April 14. The peak is northeast of and adjacent to the Angel (9,265’) and was named by David Roberts during the first climbing expedition to the Revelations in 1967. According to ...
As new elections of Nepal's parliamentary assembly approached in the fall of 2013, the minister of tourism asked the ministry’s mountaineering section to propose a list of new peaks to open to foreigners. Much later, in the fall of 2014, 104 n...
From June 5-6, Vitaly Akimov, Dmitry Grekov, Stepan Maltsev, and Sergey Selivyorstov made the first ascent of Pillar Peak (4,050m). This splendid, 900m east-facing buttress is northwest of Peak Boks (a.k.a. Box), above the lower moraines of the Ak...
It was a beautiful July Saturday for top-roping climbs at Mickey’s Beach with my buddy Tracy. While belaying him on the Egg formation, I got a great view of him climbing above the ocean and decided to take a photo. Still belaying, I slowly backed ...
In February 2015, Matt Van Biene, Coleman “Troutman” Blakeslee, Tad McCrea, and I climbed at La Pirámide (a.k.a. Cerro Colorado), a cliff discovered by Jim Donini and others in 2009 [see AAJ 2014 for Donini’s introductory report]. While at the cli...
The 2014–2015 season was marred by the death of Pablo Argiz, the pilot of a helicopter that crashed while attempting to rescue an injured climber. Argiz crashed because he misjudged the capabilities of his own helicopter; however, he was attemptin...
On the afternoon of January 31, after completing La Travesía del Oso Buda and making an attempt on Cerro Torre’s southeast ridge, Marc-André Leclerc and I hiked up to Niponino with our sights set on another longstanding project of mine. During my ...
For this past season in Chaltén, my 12th trip to these mountains, Marc-André Leclerc and I blocked off three weeks together from January 15 to February 7. Marc is quite young, but already a very accomplished technical climber. He arrived in Chalté...
Cerro Piramidal del Potrero Escondido (5,386m) is located in the Central Andes, outside of Mendoza. On September 16, Lucas Amuchástegui, Juan Bautista Alonso, and Pablo Laumann (all Argentina) departed from Punta de Vacas to reach Río Chorrillos a...
Cerro Negro Pabellón (6,086m, 33º26´59.9"S, 69º42´09.7"W) is a rarely visited peak in the Cordón de las Delicias; it is the highest of the Cordillera Frontal, near Mendoza. The mountain had three previous ascents: first by Mendoza climbers in 1953...
The Cordón Riso Patrón is a mountain range on the western edge of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field and is one of the most remote areas of Chile. In austral winter 2014 our team of Franz Goerlich, Paul Sass, Uwe Seifert, and I (all Germany) reache...
On April 30, I was leading Diagonal (5.6) on the Small Cliff at Ragged Mountain. I fell from a point about halfway up, at a point where the diagonaling crack offsets to the right. I had put in a cam about 10 feet up and then a nut in a not-great p...
Cerro Albardón del Potrero Escondido (5,112m) is part of the Cordón del Potrero Escondido Los Clonquis, outside of Mendoza. In November, Adrián Petrocelli and Glauco Muratti (both Argentina) departed from Punta de Vacas to make the first ascent.Th...
On October 22, Alexis Trudel (Canada) and I left Cusco with Luis Crispin (Peru) and headed toward Mollepata. From there we headed to Soray Pampa by truck with Edwin Espinoza, who would join us for our climb. We hiked up to the base of Cerro Jatunj...