Rongdo is a remote valley in the eastern part of the Nubra. Historians of South Asia are familiar with this area, as it holds an ancient trade route between Yarkand and northern India (part of the Silk Road). Rongdo Valley is located south of the ...
In November 2014, Cullen Kirk, Karl Kvashay, and I climbed the first of many new routes on Tucupit Point in Zion's Kolob Canyon. Astrolizard (IV 5.11) climbs a clean, mostly wide crack system on Tucupit’s south face and is comprised of mostly Indi...
In late May, Basque climbers Kepa Berasategi and Odei Girado climbed a new route on Jangyaraju I (5,675m). On May 23 they traveled from Huaraz to Collon (ca 3,400m), entered the Ishinca Valley, and trekked past Jatunpampa. Before reaching a waterf...
In July 2014, Dan Godshall, Greg German, Jackie Kuusinen, and I finished a new route on the right side of the Black Wall: Sinners On Sunday (700’, 5.12 C0). The seven-pitch route takes a line between Rainbow Highway (AAJ 2013) and High Variance (A...
Our friends Paula Alegre and Oriol Baró were already in the Rolwaling when Jordi Corominas, Jonatan Larranaga, and I arrived. In a week or so we were at the base of Chugimago North (5,945m HMG-Finn map), planning to make the second ascent of Infle...
In the autumn season, David Kovarik, Tomas Svoboda, and I, from the Czech Republic, attempted the impressive north face of Kangcho Nup (a.k.a. Kangchung Nup or West, Cholo, or Abi; 6,043m HMG-Finn map). The twin Kangchung peaks (west and east) lie...
After acclimatizing on Chekigo Sano, a two-person team made a spirited attempt on the magnificent southwest face of Drangnag Ri (6,757m). Starting slightly right of center from the glacier basin at 5,400m, they climbed rock to French 5, vertical i...
Paula Alegre (Argentina) and Oriol Baro (Spain) went to the Rolwaling in October with a raft of photos but no clear plans. They left with two new lines, one of them to a previously virgin summit. Alegre and Baro first cast their eyes over the sout...
West of the Naya Kanga group and the mountain recently renamed Baden-Powell Scout Peak lies the Chimisedang Lekh, a cluster of steeper, more difficult, and unnamed peaks rising to nearly 5,900m. There is little information on these summits. The ma...
In 2014 the Russian Championships were held in the Karavshin. Afterward several teams stayed on to complete more climbs. On August 11, Anastasia Ermishina and Alexander Zhigalov made the first ascent of the 3,850m south summit of Silver Wall via t...
In 1991, I was part of a French team visiting the Ak-su and Karavshin valleys. We established a number of routes, the most popular today being Perestroika Crack on Russian Tower (a.k.a. Peak Slesov, 4,240m). In September and October, Christophe Mo...
In November I led a six-member team to attempt the first known ascent of Nar Phu (5,921m HMG-Finn). This peak lies on the ridge east of the Chulu Group, north of the Kang La. It was brought onto the permitted list in 2012. We trekked for seven day...
Matteo De Zaiacomo and I flew to Batken in southern Kyrgyzstan in mid-June and trekked two days to our base camp in the Ak-su Valley. The next day we checked out the south face of Ortotyubek (a.k.a. Ortotubek or Central Pyramid, 3,850m), and on Ju...
It was an unseasonably cold, wet month in the Winds, according to the locals. And, indeed, during our four-week stay in Titcomb Basin (mid-August to mid-September), we saw only seven days of sunny, somewhat stable weather. And only half of that ti...
Half the fun is getting there—that’s usually true. Reaching the unclimbed northeast buttress of Mt. Despair (7,927’), southwest of the Picket Range, would first require venturing up a brush-choked valley at which even seasoned Cascades aficionados...
Lincoln Peak (9,080’) is located among the “Black Buttes” and is a prominent subsidiary summit of Mt. Baker, less than a mile southwest of Colfax Peak. Steep on all sides, it is the gutted remains of a 500,000-year-old stratovolcano, otherwise kno...
Jason Nelson and I free climbed the Central Pillar/Watchman Direct on the Watchman on October 30. Bryan Bird and Zach Lee had previously freed most of the route, up to a feature called the Red Clam, at 5.11. For us, the remaining three pitches wen...
Last March, I spent my spring break in Zion National Park with Mike Brumbaugh and Andy Raether. Not caring about grades, crowds, or really anything other than having a good time on a sandstone big wall, we set out to find something that piqued our...
On January 8, 2015, Jon Glassberg and I climbed a long new route on the east face of the East Peak of Bridge Mountain. The first six pitches climb a wide crack system visible on the left side of this multi-colored wall and can be seen from the 13-...
Capulin Canyon lies in the heart of the Dome Wilderness, a pristine section of the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument, famous for its Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings. However, no cliff dwellings exist in this area. The ...