In addition to the routes described in more detail in this section, as well as Mikey Schaefer’s Father Time route on Middle Cathedral [see feature article in this AAJ], there are a few other significant new routes to report from Yosemite Valle...
In early October, Steve Bosque, Ezra Allee, and I established an eight-pitch variation to Harding’s southwest face route on Liberty Cap. Bad Moon Rising (14 pitches, V 5.8 A2) begins 50’ to the right of the massive corner system that makes up th...
In August AAC members Steve Beckwith (U.K.), Matthew Bunn (Australia), Matthew Traver (U.K.), and I traveled to East Greenland, intent on exploring unclimbed peaks. After congregating in Tasiilaq, we spent several days trying to locate p...
Keith Ladzinski, Mike Libecki, Angie Payne, and Ethan Pringle visited the Mythics Cirque at roughly the same time as the team that named it (see report here) and completed numerous difficult boulder problems and two new routes on Ataatap Tower (...
In August, Brad Wilson and Dulcinea Groff established a six-pitch route on the south face of Lone Pine Peak: Mountain Devil Dike (900’, III 5.12d). The route begins on the first two pitches of the Michael Strassman Memorial Route and then climb...
In July 2012, Casey Zak and Luke Stefurak established a four-pitch route, Dr. Bear Love (800’, III 5.11a C1) on Merriam Peak, located in the Royce Lakes Basin outside of Pine Creek. The route climbs a clean crack system on the west aspect of t...
In fall 2012, Daniel Jeffcoach, Vitaliy Musiyenko, and Tom Ruddy established a new route, The Siege (1,000’, IV 5.10c A0), on a formation known as the Fortress. This wall is located in Sequoia National Park, six miles from Paradise Ridge trail...
In 2011 and 2012, I completed five new routes on the Whitney Portal Buttress and surrounding walls with various partners. The longest of these is the Never Ending Story (12 pitches, V 5.12 or 5.11 A0) on the Whitney Portal Buttress proper...
In summer 2011 and 2012, Amy Ness and I established two new routes on the needles of the Mt. Whitney massif. The first route is on Day Needle: BCB On The Prow (15 pitches, VI 5.10 A1). We initially sieged the first four pitches (500’) of t...
The southeast face of Mt. Russell is a looming triangular wall above Upper Boyscout Lake in the Mt. Whitney region. On September 4, Amy Ness, Phil Bircheff, and I climbed a new route on the face via a clean corner system. The route begins ...
On Lone Pine Peak, Amy Ness and I completed three new routes, a previously unrecorded route, and also a first free ascent. The first new route was Full Quiver (14 pitches, IV 5.9+ R). This route ascends the Three Arrows formation, which lies...
Amy Ness and I made the first ascent of the Forgotten Ridge (V 5.10 R), which follows a massive spiraling ridgeline on the southeast aspect of Peak 3,986. We climbed the ridge over two straight days, hauling one bag. We fixed no pitons or bo...
The year I was born (1979), Galen Rowell established the first and only line on the mythical Cyclorama Wall (Peak 12,860’). His write-up in the 1980 AAJ, where he called the wall “every bit as impressive as the Diamond on Longs Peak,”inspired me...
An excellent trip to Mt. Chamberlin in 2010 left Chris Brown, Jimmy Haden, Mike Pennings, and I pining for more. So in late July 2011, we reconvened for another trip to the alpine playground surrounding the Crabtree Lakes, this time armed wi...
Each time I awoke during the night, I’d turn my head toward the towering black void outlined by the tail of the Milky Way. My partner, Jan Roestel, and I had just finished a recon on the first pitch of an unclimbed feature in the southernm...
In September, Shaun Reed, Brad Wilson, and I spent two weeks establishing a new route on Tehipite Dome in Kings Canyon National Park. The route, Astro-Gil (1,700’, IV 5.11), ascends the previously unclimbed southeast face up bullet stone...
Jediah Porter and I were only acquaintances when, by complete accident, we crossed paths on the Evolution Traverse in August 2011. We made plans to attempt the Evolution Traverse during the winter of 2012; however, our climb was foiled b...
On September 3, 2012, Dave Nettle, Peter Croft, Greg Epperson, and I completed the first free route on the main wall of Angel Wings, located in Sequoia National Park. Valkyrie (V 5.12) is the product of over a decade of attempts while enduri...
Laurel Knob, a 1,200’ dome in the Cashiers Valley, saw a boom in 2012 with four new routes, all 700–1,000’ in length and 5.11 or harder. Brad Wilson, Mike Fischesser, and Joe Lovenshimer established two routes. The first, Fathom Escape Hatch (...
In summer of 2012, Nathan Brown and partners Jonathan Foster and Tony Spainhour established two new routes on left side of Warbonnet Peak in the Cirque of the Towers. [Brown and Foster established an additional route on the same aspect of Warb...