Matthew Ward from Idaho and I made an attempt in July on a gray flow of ice toward the left end of the large, quasi-vertical rock barrier that characterizes the west face of Sajama (6,542m), Bolivia's highest mountain. We bailed on this super-impr...
On August 26, at 12:30 p.m., ranger Jim Springer received a cell phone call from two climbers attempting the Koven Route on Mt. Owen. (A second pair in the same party was attempting the route separately.) According to the caller, the climbers were...
On August 18, at around 4:15 p.m., rangers were notified that a climber had sustained traumatic injuries in an unroped fall while descending about 200 feet below the summit of the Grand. The climber, one of four brothers climbing together, had tum...
On the afternoon of June 2, a 38-year-old man fell while leading the Sundance Route (5.7) and sustained fatal head injuries. He was wearing a helmet. Further details were not available by press time. The last climbing fatality at Devils Tower was ...
In early June, a climber took a 35-foot ground fall from the fifth bolt on Fadda (5.10a sport) due to belayer error. While the climber’s fall was partially arrested by his belayer, slowing his descent, he struck the ground at a high rate of speed,...
Early in the afternoon on August 27, EJ and LS (both age 21) were climbing Trouble Clef (5.9), an 80-foot sport route, when EJ took a lead fall above the last protection bolt as he neared the anchors. LS, who was belaying with a tube-style device,...
On April 29, a 25-year-old male was belaying a 22-year-old male climber on JewJew Fruit (5.10c) at Fruit Wall. The climber, who was attempting to flash the route, had progressed to just below the seventh bolt. He clipped a quickdraw to the bolt an...
I first went to Zanskar in 2013, inspired by an article by Harish Kapadia in the Himalayan Journal. Our team explored the glaciated regions of the Pensilungpa (AAJ 2014), and like many others I was instantly fascinated by the wealth of unclimbed p...
W.C. Fields once said: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.” Sound advice for most people, but mountaineers tend to be obsessive.I first attempted then-unclimbed Nyambo Konka (6,114m), a dom...
In late September and early October, our Czech-Slovak team made a trip to virgin peaks in the Alai mountains. Our plan was to climb from the Zor Kumtor Valley, which is the last valley flowing north into the long Kichik-Alai Valley before the latt...
The Zayliyskiy Alatau (also sometimes spelled Zaylyiskiy, Zailiiskii, or Zalisky) is the most northerly part of the Tien Shan, and the Tuyuk-Su subrange—the mountains around the Tuyuk-Su Valley—are easily accessed from Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest...
The opportunity to visit Antarctica came through Marek Holeček. Peter Hamor and I were in Kathmandu in the spring of 2017 after reaching the summit of Dhaulagiri. We bumped into Marek and he told me that he planned to visit the Antarctic Peninsula...
On June 7, Argentine Nehuén Conterno and Peruvians Rodrigo Mendoza and Jorge Sirva departed from Pitumarca (80km south of Cusco) and drove 30km to the small village Alkatauri. From there, they hiked one and a half hours to the base of Tacusiri (5,...
In 2017 our expedition made the first ascent of Korlang Pari Tippa South (AAJ 2018). In November 2018, I returned to the Rolwaling to lead a small team attempting to climb Korlang Pari Tippa North (5,738m, according to the Ministry of Tourism, whi...
In June, José María “Chemari” Andres, Christine Baschinger, Samuel Gomez, Jorge Valle, and I (all Spaniards) climbed new routes on the northeast faces of Jurau A (5,640m) and Jurau B (5,727m), which are the two main peaks on the northeast flank of...
In August, my expedition partner Duncan McDaniel (USA) and I attempted four different routes up four different mountains in southern Peru, and succeeded on one. The first two were in the Cordillera Urubamba and the second two in the Cordillera Vil...
From December 5–9, a crew from Fondo Acceso Andino (the Ecuadorian analog to the Access Fund in the U.S.) went to explore a new area: the Towers of Simiatug. For rock climbing in Ecuador, this is a discovery of the decade.The volcanic Towers of Si...
A 27-year-old man died after falling about 60 feet to the ground at the Bank sector of Shelf Road, near Cañon City. The climber had limited outdoor experience, and witnesses reported that he fell from the anchor atop a limestone sport climb after ...
This accident occurred after a climber completed a long route (Sex Face, 5.12a) during which he linked two pitches from the ground. While descending from the top of the second pitch, the climber was lowered off the end of the rope, resulting in a ...
Two male soloists died in separate falls from the popular First Flatiron above Boulder in 2017. In one case, deteriorating weather likely was a factor, as rain and snow moved in during the man’s climb. The accessible, low-angle slabs of the Flatir...