Peaks Above Harding Icefield, Kenai Fjords National Park. Rick Dare, Dallas Virchow, Joe Sears and I spent 13 days on the Harding Icefield in June. We reached the icefield via the Exit Glacier and spent three days hauling loads to Base Camp at a g...
Ama Dablam, Various Ascents in the Post-Monsoon. One-fourth of all the expeditions in Nepal in the post-monsoon season went to just one lovely 6812-meter peak in the Everest region. Mount Ama Dablam. Altogether 70 people from 14 of the season’s 19...
Gangapurna, South Face. James Blench, Dwayne Congdon, Dave McNab and I had been climbing together for the past three years and were close friends. We had learned to resolve our problems effectively. Four individuals with differing expectations, di...
El Capitan, Secret Passage. Sean Villanueva and I arrived in Yosemite wanting to free climb in a fun style: no fixing, no jugging, no rappelling, just finding our way and bringing the mandolin and flutes for some El Cap freestyle jamming. The firs...
Mt. Huntington. The west side of Mount Huntington was in better condition than other terrain at that elevation and as a result saw numerous ascents. The most notable was a 17-hour solo effort by Chris Turiano. He climbed the West Face Couloir to t...
Cordilleras Vilcanota and Vilcabamba: Verónica, Yucay, and Chicón Groups. An expedition from the Como section of the Italian Alpine Club visited the Cordilleras Vilcanota and Vilcabamba. The leader, who was accompanied by his wife, was Luigi Binag...
Peak 4810, Various Ascents. It was reported that on the 1100-meter east face of 4810 two significant routes were established in 1995. M. Astakhov, A. Kniazhev, Y. Koshelenko and A. Popov from Rostovna-Donu made the second ascent of the 6B Klenov r...
Cerro Catedral, Main Tower, South Face. Eduardo Brenner, Marcos Couch and I made a new route above Bariloche on the south face of the main tower of Cerro Catedral. There had been only one ascent of the face, that of Fonrouge and Klenk many years a...
Cordillera Quimsa Cruz, Note on Activity. Please note: the only way to know what has been climbed in the Quimsa Cruz is if climbers use grid references to identify the peaks. There is more confusion over peak names in the Quimsa Cruz than in any o...
Ruby Lake Wall, “Technical Knockout.” It is somewhat confusing to describe routes on this wall. Basically, there is a series of four dihedrals in a row near the middle of the wall. The farthest left comer, which Kim Miller, Roanne Miller and I cli...
In AAJ 2008, pp. 194-195 the author states, “The sun never dipped less than 40° above the horizon.” Actually, the sun would never rise above ca 37°. The formula for the approximate elevation of the sun at midday on midsummer’s day is 23.5° + (90-...
You can still sense the excitement in Stefan Glowacz’s voice. During a short phone call last week, the adrenaline in his blood has not calmed down yet and neither has the joy in his voice! Together with his climbing partner Holger Heuber, the pro ...
FALL ON SNOW–FAULTY USE OF CRAMPONSCalifornia, Mount Shasta, Avalanche GulchOn July 3, a climber fell near The Heart in Avalanche Gulch at 12,500 feet while descending and stuck his crampons into his calf, receiving multiple deep puncture wounds. ...
To avoid duplication of effort in connection with the preceding research, it seems worthwhile to mention certain negative results. D. A. Robertson reports that careful investigation of the files of Baltimore papers fails to reveal any printed acco...
Olympic Mountains, Washington. I spent a month in the Olympic Mountains of Washington this summer, fortunately during the driest August on record, and enjoyed a whole month of sunshine. While surveying we ascended several of the peaks surrounding ...
Mount Russell, Southwest Buttress. On September 1, Gary Colliver, TM Herbert, and I climbed a steep crack in the south-facing western-most buttress of Mount Russell. Two horrifying cracks are apparent when the buttress is viewed from the western s...
Guye Peak, West Face. The “Improbable Traverse” route was made on October 20 by Mike Borghoff and Dave Hiser, involving an ascent of a large corner on the left side of the face, then a traverse to the right on a blank-looking wall, followed by a l...
It was reported that Andy Benson, Kenton Cool, Rich Cross and Al Powell attempted the ca. 2600-meter west buttress of Sani Pakush (6885m), the pyramidal peak north of Chalt on the watershed between the Kukuay and Batura glaciers north of Broad Pea...
FALL ON ROCK, UNROPEDAlberta, Canadian Rockies, Mount TempleOn September 26, while down-climbing the steep grey rock band on the “tourist route” on Mount Temple, Banff National Park, LR slipped and fell to the scree below seriously breaking his le...
Cerro Arenales, Patagonia. An expedition, jointly sponsored by the Japanese Alpine Club and the Chilean Federación de Andinismo, made the first ascent of the Cerro Arenales (11,310 feet), which lies in the Cochrane Range above the northern part of...