Click the image below or "Download Original PDF" in left menu to download the complete Nepal section from 2014 Climbs & Expeditions.
El Altar (a.k.a. Kapak Urku) is a large, extinct stratovolcano located on the western side of Sangay National Park in central Ecuador, 170km south of Quito. Comprising the massif of El Altar are nine major peaks that rise over 5,000m and form a ho...
At the end of January 2014, Rolando Larcher, Luca Giupponi, and I began climbing a route in between the newly established route Gravity Inversion (AAJ 2014) and Pizza, Chocolate y Cerveza. The route contained fantastic climbing in a unique environ...
In late December 2013, Luis Cisneros, Blake McCord, Joel Unema, and I traveled to the friendly Pemon village of Yunek. From there we hoped to establish a new route on the east face of the Acopan Tepui. Analyzing the formation, we found a weakness ...
In January 2014, Felipe Guarderas, Nicolas Navarrete, and I put up three new routes in the Cordillera del Cocuy.The park service had closed the east side of the range, forcing us to camp on the west, so we had to do long approaches to most of the ...
In January 2013, Santiago Zuluaga and I achieved the first ascent of the remarkable hanging glacier on the northeastern aspect of Pan de Azúcar (ca 5,120m). This route is easily visible from the lake of La Plaza and had seen a couple of previous a...
The initial plan was to go ice climbing in Chile, but just four days before the flight my partner Marta Alejandre seriously injured her knee. I suddenly found myself searching for something to do with my motivation and time.I decided to go to El G...
Clemens Pischel and I traveled to the Cascada de Basaseachic (Basaseachic Falls) in the beginning of January 2014. Once there, we were absolutely overwhelmed by the fantastic rock walls, forming a natural amphitheater around the 246m waterfall, wi...
In January 2014, Alex Honnold free-soloed El Sendero Luminoso (V 5.12d), on El Toro, which was established by Jeff Jackson and Kurt Smith in 1994. Eleven of the route’s 15 pitches are rated 5.12, making the climb perhaps the most sustained free so...
In the fall of 2013, South African climbers Benj de Charmoy, Duncan Fraser, and Leo Le Roux established the nine-pitch route Dancing with the World (300m, 6c). The line climbs left of some prominent black streaks on the left side of the Mitsinjoar...
Unclimbed, freestanding, multi-pitch desert spires are an ever-increasing rarity. For those seeking such treasure, the Tigray today likely inspires the same thrill as Fred Beckey’s first glimpse of Moses Tower in the early 1970s.My 2012 visit to G...
In January 2012, Magali Salle and I made a trip to Ethiopia, hoping to explore and climb new routes. First stop: the Gheralta region. The area is full of colorful sandstone, though we sometimes found places where it’s more sand than stone. Despite...
On Sudan’s eastern border with Eritrea lies an impressive collection of granite walls and domes called the Taka Mountains. Inspired by past reports from Tony Howard (AAJ 1999) and David Jonglez (AAJ 2003), and other vague rumors of climbing, my wi...
In April 2013, Patrik Aufdenblatten (Switzerland) and my longtime friend Ines Papert (Germany) joined me for a trip to the beautiful village of Taghia in the Atlas Mountains, where there are many limestone big walls up to 1,000m tall, with much po...
In mid-January, Andreas Parparinos and I climbed many new routes on the amazing south face of Timichcha (1,972m), which is clustered with large buttresses and towers.In the town of Ighrem we found a very basic room to make our base camp. On Janua...
Click the image below or "Download Original PDF" in left menu to download the revised and updated Know the Ropes section from the 2013 edition of Accidents in North American Mountaineering.
The Austrian Christian Stangl has become the first person to climb the three highest mountains on each of the seven continents. While many people now have climbed the so-called Seven Summits, only Stangl has—seemingly unequivocally—climbed each ...
After six weeks in base camp and one attempt at the British Route on the southwest face of Xixabangma (a.k.a. Shishapangma), the weather got worse, with a lot of fresh snow at altitude and a strong northerly wind. We could see a one-kilometer hori...
In May, Zhou Peng and I saw Chomolhari Kang (7,034m, 7,054m GPS, 28°09.869’N, 90°10.951’E) for the first time. We were traveling from Pumajiangtang village to Kangma with the aim of getting a closer view of peaks on the Bhutan-Tibet border. We had...
My main project for the year was an expedition to Tibet in October with Miha Gasperin (doctor), Luka Krajnc, Tadej Kriselj, Nejc Marcic, Marko Prezelj, Luka Strazar, and Martin Zumer. There is an obvious unclimbed line on the south face of Phola G...