Because those damn British Columbia hippies don’t allow choppers to fly over their side of the Rockies, Dave Cheesmond and I had to hike half a day to even see the east face of Mt. Assiniboine (3,618m). (OK, I kind of agree with those hippies!) Wh...
On November 15, Paige (female, 20) and I (male, 24) set out to climb the ultra-classic Jah Man on Sister Superior. We made it to the base of the tower about 11 a.m. to find another party making their way to the top of the first pitch. We figured w...
This flag-draped rock pile on Manaslu is just below the point where most climbers stop their ascent—a point about 20 meters before the actual summit. Photo by Guy Gotter In recent years an international group of mountaineering researchers cam...
The 1,200m west face of Pik Trud. (1) Popov Route (5B, 1984). (2) Tyatinin Route (5B, 1959). (3) Belotserkovskiy-Chshukin Route (5B, 2020). (4) Yun Route (5B, 1982). (5) Gorbunov Route (5B, 1983. This line is approximate). Photo by Kirill Belots...
When I first saw photographs of the wall, it was definitely not love at first sight; in fact, it took me some time to realize that I really wanted to give it a go. The wall is impressive, but it didn’t grab my attention. And the poor weather in th...
In August 2018, I joined a small expedition to northwest Spiti led by Dr. Kallol Das from the Kolkata section of the Himalayan Club. The objective was to introduce beginners to the craft of self-reliant Himalayan climbing. We chose the Suvita Lung...
In August 2019, Ukrainians Alexey Litovchenko, Yaroslav Reva, and Vladimir Roshko put up a new route on the north face (Sindaura Wall) of Agmashenebeli (3,854m). This face is considered perhaps the most difficult—and on one of the highest peaks—of...
Forty meters below the summit, what had seemed impossible had almost become reality. It was day nine on the wall, and Jacopo Larcher and I both were tired from the previous days. But our motivation was stronger than ever. The sun was shining, we w...
As if enchanted, the tower appeared to grow bigger the higher we climbed. At 4 a.m. on February 6, 2016, after three weeks of effort, I was jumaring to the final hard pitches on the east face of Torre Central. The monotonous movement allowed me to...
Jagged ridgelines darken and blur in the dim light. A palette of blues merges into thick, bland gray. I lean my head forward to rest on the rock wall in front of me and pay out slack listlessly as the rope twitches to Chantel. In the murk of early...
Sherpi Kangri II (ca 7,000m according to Eberhard Jurgalski and the Miyamori and Seyfferth maps; higher and lower heights also appear in print) lies at 35°28'45"N, 76°48'21"E on the Line of Control between the India- and Pakistan-controlled sector...
Peak 5,540m is located at 16°24'40.45"S, 67°56'50.31"W, between Serkhe Kollu and Hathi Kollu, and only 20km in a straight line from La Paz. It is unnamed on IGM Map 6044-IV and other sources. I had heard that locals refer to it as Khasiri, which i...
Simon Chatelan on pitch 15 of L’Accidentelle et l’Accidenté on Aiguille de l’Amone. Photo: Silvan Schüpbach The following climbs appeared on the “Big List” of notable 2019 ascents prepared in advance of Piolets d’Or nominations. The list was ...
In November, I began my 19th expedition to Patagonia but my first to the Northern Icefield. Joining me were Lukas Hinterberger and Nicolas Hojac. We spent three weeks at a base camp in the forest below the Nef Glacier. On our second week, November...
LAST JUNE I was guiding three people for a ski descent of the Coleman-Deming Route on Mt. Baker. Wind the previous day had exceeded 20 mph, loading fresh snow onto the Roman Wall, the 40° headwall before the summit plateau. I first guided this rou...
On August 20, I (male, 26) drove up to the Voo for some after-work top-rope soloing. I set up a fixed line on To the Moon (5.10b/V0), a 35-foot crack with a bolted anchor that is often bouldered. I had not climbed the route before. For soloing, I...
On August 9, Darwin Day (64) was attempting to summit Gannett Peak to complete his goal of climbing the highest mountain in each of the Western states when he began to feel ill. It’s not known how high Day and his climbing partner reached on the 1...
On August 10, Zijah Kurtovic (63) fell to his death during an attempt on 11,889-foot Pingora Peak. While leading the final pitch (5.6) of a route on the east side of Pingora, his climbing partner (male, 67 ) fell 40 to 50 feet and suffered fractur...
At approximately 11:15 a.m. on August 31, a climber called 911 to report that he was with a 38-year-old man from another climbing party who had been injured by rockfall on Gilkey Tower and was unable to move under his own power. The caller was a s...
Just after 5 p.m. on July 18, a climber made a 911 call reporting that his partner had been hit by a very large boulder; he then fell and sustained injuries to his back, foot, and hand. The two climbers had been planning to do Raven’s Crack, near...