From December 30, 2014–January 17, 2015, Myles Moser and I made the first capsule-style ascent of the route Una Fina Linea de Locura (31 pitches, VII 5.12 A3) on the Central Tower in Torres del Paine. Our goal was to free every pitch of the 4,000’...
At the beginning of January 2015, a group of 16 students, NOLS instructors Anne Peick, Christian Steidle, Martin Arteaga, and I organized an expedition to the El Engaño Valley, which includes the Cordón Colmillo. To our knowledge this range (north...
In November, Ulises Espinosa (Chile) and I went to the Las Leñas Valley, where in six days we completed the first ascent of Cerro General Carrera (both its west [3,198m, GPS] and central summit [3,313m, GPS]), and Cerro Manuel Rodríguez (4,026m). ...
In preparation for an expedition to the Volcano Pular, in July 2004, Norberto Alarcon, Freddy Grey, and I opened a route to the south summit of the Rubillas massif. The ascent was done in the day, starting from the town of Baños Morales, east of S...
In mid-July, I met Cecilia Buil (Spain) in Chile; our plan being to climb some new routes on Cerro Marmolejo (6,109m) located at the head of Cajon del Maipo, a long, mountainous valley near Santiago. We first wanted to climb the route established ...
La Pala (3,669m GPS), though not very high, is a very large mountain with around 1,500m of prominence. The peak is located near the fork of the Rio Claro and the Estero Godoy ravine. After having climbed to the north summit (3,647m GPS) a couple o...
Torres del Campanario (ca 5,090m) is nice set of towers outside of Mendoza in the Cordillera Frontal of Argentina’s Central Andes. It has granite very similar to the walls in southern Patagonia. In March, a number of fine new lines were opened in ...
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 ...