San Rafael Swell, Bottleneck Peak, Fumbling Toward Ecstasy. With Laura Zaruba, on October 12, I climbed Fumbling Toward Ecstasy (four pitches, 5.10) on Bottleneck Peak. The route takes a right-facing corner system on the right side of the north fa...
P 6940 Attempt and Ascent of Peak Near Skilbrum. A seven-man Japanese team led by Tadakiyo Sakahara had originally been planning to climb Gasher- brum II, but they suffered such delays in Islamabad that when they arrived at the Baltoro Glacier, th...
Nun, northwest face, attempt. In September Jean-Marc Challandes, Sebastien Gerber, Andreas Hutter, Berhard Spack, and we established an advance base camp at 5,400m on the big plateau that lies at the foot of the l,700m-high northwest face of Nun. ...
Mount St. Elias Attempt and Climbs in the Tombstone Mountains. My three brothers, Herbert, Wolfgang, Bernhard, and I in the summer of 1981 were back in the St. Elias Mountains. We had as our goal the unclimbed northwest ridge of Mount St. Elias. T...
Wyoming, Grand Teton National Park (3) Symmetry Spire, Jensen Ridge—On August 2, Frederick E. Wright, Jr. (19) and Frederick Medrick (19) were just starting to climb the Jensen Ridge on Symmetry Spire. Wright was leading and was 60 to 70 feet abov...
Yosemite Valley, Various Activity. Big news was the free climbing of two El Capitan routes. The first to go was Lurking Fear, which fell at the able hands of Beth Rodden and Tommy Caldwell (see note below). In 1994, Steve Schneider, with help from...
STRANDED, BAD WEATHER, FATIGUECalifornia, Yosemite ValleyOn March 31, Joel Seton (16) and Jeffrey Inman (17) got stuck on The Nose of El Cap. At 4:30 p.m., Ranger Griffiths received a report that someone was calling for help from the Nose route on...
EQUIPMENT FAILURE—HOMEMADE RIVET HANGER, FALL ON ROCKCalifornia, Yosemite Valley, El CapitanOn May 29, at 1430, Canadian climber John Chilton (36) started leading the A1 rivet ladder on pitch 24 of the Shield, heading for Chickenhead Ledge. At abo...
Cholatse, first winter ascent of north face, by new variants to French Route. Koreans Park Jung-hun and Choi Kang-sik reached the summit of 6,440m Cholatse at midday on January 16, having made the first winter ascent of the north face. The two arr...
K2, Attempt from the West and Ascent from the South. Poles Wojciech Kurtyka, Krzysztof Wielicki and I spent three and a half weeks of hard work on the Sickle on the west side of K2 before we abandoned the effort as being too dangerous. We then red...
This is the fifteenth annual report of the Safety Committee and the second in conjunction with the Alpine Club of Canada. The addition of the reports from Canada has been worthwhile and documents more completely the accidents that have occurred in...
The Denali Medical Research Project, 1982-85Peter H. Hackett, M.D., Robert C. Roach, M.S., Robert B. Schoene, M.D., Frank Hollingshead, M.D. and William J. Mills, Jr., M.D.IN THE MONTHS OF MAY and June of 1982, 1983, and 1985 the Department of Hig...
El Capitan, Aurora. In August 1981 Peter Mayfield and I climbed a new route left of Tangerine Trip. We used the bruised and beaten start of the Trip to reach the huge arch where that route traverses right. At this point we went left 180 feet, gett...
This is the fifty-fifth issue of Accidents in North American Mountaineering and the twenty-fourth issue in which The Alpine Club of Canada has contributed data and narratives.Canada: This was the year of the stranded climber in Canada. Four of the...
Silence of the Lands—AntarcticaJay SmithNo other region offers mountaineers more spectacular, unexplored climbing potential than Antarctica, the last expanse of true wilderness on our planet. Far from the flat, featureless wasteland that many imag...
Peaks above Ruth Gorge. Sepp Jöchler and I spent two weeks climbing peaks that rise above the Ruth Gorge. We set up Base Camp below the east buttress of “Mount Bradley” on July 3. On July 4, we climbed the 5000-foot-high east buttress of “Bradley”...
The Alpine Conservation PartnershipA global initiative to protect and restore alpine ecosystems.Alton C. Byers, Ph.D.Alpine ecosystems, gateways to the world’s highest summits, are among the world’s most beautiful and important landscapes. They ar...
Mountaineers: Great Tales of Bravery and Conquest. Ed Douglas et al. DK Publishing, 2011. 360 pages. Color photos. Hardcover. $40.00.Ignore the vulgar subtitle and open the book. It’s filled with hundreds of glossy 12x10 pages and abundant photogr...
Polar Bear Spire, First Ascent. Gerhard Heidorn, Stefan Glowacz, Holger Heuber, and I arrived in Clyde River, Baffin Island, on August 7. In the months of August and September, the sea is normally free of ice and can be traversed by boat. We wante...
What’s Behind that Battle StarHugh W. EvansAll the glory, laud, and honor May fall 'round our shining armor That only rotting cloth doth be,But this is not for what we fought.THE individual stories that have had their source in our recent war are ...