Sierra Nevada. For the Sierra Club, which is interested primarily in conservation, mountaineering activities are administered by a Mountaineering Committee, at present under the chairmanship of Morgan Harris. Local rock climbing committees conduct...
LOSS OF CONTROL, VOLUNTARY GLISSADE, FAULTY USE OF CRAMPONSWashington, Mount RainierOn May 31, 1981, John Sabella (33) caught a crampon point and lost control while attempting a sitting glissade during a descent from the Emmons Glacier at the 10,5...
Ghent II, Second Ascent. A 10-man Japanese expedition led by Harutoshi Kobayashi made the second ascent of Ghent II (24,092 feet), which had been climbed first by Austrians in 1977. Base Camp was established on the Kondus Glacier at 13,450 feet. T...
Lhotse Intermediate, Attempt and Tragedy. Vladimir Bashkirov, a Russian climber who summited Everest with his Indonesian employers this season had, amongst his many accomplishments, led the successful first attempt to climb the very steep south ri...
Nowhere To Run, South Buttress, North Mountain, Kings Canyon National Park. Along the “Motor Nature Trail” and above a Park Service residence rises a prominent pillar of rock. In May, Bill McConachie, Barry Fowlie and I found that the route had fi...
Snow Creek Wall, Country Club Route. Thwarted by bad weather, and somewhat put-off by the overabundance of people heading for the north side of Mount Stuart, we sighted instead on nearby Snow Creek Wall for our after-Christmas adventure. On Decemb...
FALL ON ROCK, INEXPERIENCENew Hampshire, Mount WashingtonOn December 31, 1982, at 2300, Edward Aalbue (21) fell to his death while out looking for a friend who was overdue from a climb of the Central Gully in Huntington Ravine. Aalbue went out tow...
Paiju Peak. In the late fall of 1960 Rick Litterick, my wife Courtney and I gathered in Abbottabad, West Pakistan, to organize our visit to Paiju Peak in the central Karakoram. Some months later the government of Pakistan approved our plans, but f...
K2, West Ridge and Abruzzi Spur Attempts. Our team consisted of Doug Scott, Joe Tasker, Dick Renshaw and me. We left Skardu on May 10. Deep snow on the Baltoro Glacier hindered our progress. At the foot of K2 on May 24, the porters refused to carr...
Notes Damien Gildea, “Many of the peaks in these areas would have had previous ascents by BAS personnel based at Port Lockroy over the years, but it was almost certainly the first time snowboarding had been conducted here and almost all of the pea...
Sierra Nevada, California: (2) Yosemite Valley. On 31 May 1947 Donald Boyd, a 14-year-old boy, was killed by a fall from Sunnyside Bench beneath upper Yosemite Falls. Another boy of the same age was with him. It was evening and getting dark. They ...
Rocky Mountain National Park, New Routes. Notchtop, Southeast Face. A variation of White Room, which was first climbed by Briggs and Hamilton in 1974, Black Curtains goes directly over the roof avoiding the poorly protected traverse to the left. O...
California, Yosemite National Park, Phantom Pinnacle. On 5 July, Robert Foster (22) and Jeffrey Schaffer (23), both of Berkeley, began a climb on Phantom Pinnacle at about 10:15 a.m. The first two pitches went easily. The third pitch, a long, stre...
Mt. Godwin, probable first ascent, West Ridge. In early April, my dad Harold Faust, George Peck, and I climbed the West Ridge (Alaska Grade 2) of Mt. Godwin in the Kenai Mountains, near Seward. At about 5,860', Mt. Godwin is not a tall peak, thoug...
Teram Kangri III. Our expedition was composed of Masatoshi Sato, Zenzo Shikanai, Mitsutaka Kudo, Masanori Oka, Takayoshi Sato, Osamu Nonomura, Tetsuo Hasegawa, Junji Kurotaki, Kenji Nikko, Akira Marui, Gaku Ishi and me as leader. We left Khapalu o...
Gasherbrum II, Husband-and-Wife Ascent. My wife Liliane, her brother Alain Bontemps and I reached the summit of Gasherbrum II on June 12. We were accompanied to Base Camp by Louis Thiberge, thus complying with the Pakistani regulation of having fo...
Lost Eagle Pinnacle, Wind River Range. From a campsite on Slide Lake, Rick Horn, Joe Larson, Dave Eland, Pat Paddon, and I made the first ascent of this 2000-foot pinnacle on July 30. We ascended by the easiest route we could find and this reached...
Mt. Victoria. First guideless traverse N. to S. peak. August 1, 1938. E. Cromwell, Miss G. Engelhard. “Plains” to Lake Louise (12 hours).
A.A.C., Sierra Nevada Section. In 1995 our section worked hard to improve communications both within the club and with non-members in the local climbing communities. Hosting the A.A.C. Annual Meeting last December in Oakland provided a perfect foc...
Mountaineering in the National Parks. Interest of the National Park Service in mountain climbing in Park areas has steadily increased. The responsibility of Park personnel in encouraging safe climbing and in carrying out rescues is now more clearl...