On May 30, an independent expedition at 14,200-foot camp notified rangers via radio that one member of their team, a 24-year-old Coloradan, had an altered mental status. The patient’s team stated that they had been dropped off by plane at base cam...
At approximately 11 p.m. on May 19, a 24-year-old male climber was descending the ridge below 17,200-foot camp when he fell roughly 1,200 vertical feet onto the Peters Glacier. He and his climbing partner had just summited via the West Rib and wer...
On May 17, a 43-year-old female climber fell into a crevasse while unroped on Motorcycle Hill, above 11,200-foot camp. This climber was ascending without skis or snowshoes at the time of the fall. She was assisted out of the crevasse by one of her...
Close to the summit of Angsi Dong Dong, looking southeast along the rim of the Angsi Glacier basin, in shadow behind the climber. Just to the right of the climber is Peak 6,013m, climbed by the left skyline ridge in 2024. The big peak in the dis...
Michael Telstad zigzagged up steep rock to reach the ice dagger on Borrowed Time. He wrote, “Finding decent protection was a slow, agonizing process.” Photo by Justin Sackett. The west face of Sloan Peak (7,835’) has been at the forefront of ...
Throughout the first week of July, Adam “Mo” Moline and I completed the fourth ascent of Wayne Wallace’s Mongo Ridge (VI 5.10a, 2006). Our climb was supported by the AAC’s Live Your Dream Grant and represents the culmination of six climbing season...
Worth the Jaunt (300m, Alaska Grade III, 5.10), the first ascent of Organa Pipette on the Juneau Icefield. Photo by Cameron Jardell. Loaded up with Costco’s finest provisions and two modified plastic sleds, Vincent LaPointe and I helicoptere...
Sam Cohen climbing the splitter hand crack on Inside Passage’s final headwall pitch. Photo by Brandon Kupczyk. In early August, Clay James, Brandon Kupczyk, and I established a new route in the Mendenhall Towers outside of Juneau. Our line i...
The following climbers who passed away in 2023 wrote many reports and articles for the American Alpine Journal over the years. Here, we offer brief tributes to these friends and contributors. DMITRY GOLOVCHENKO from Russia wrote eight articles fo...
Allen Steck was one of the most accomplished and influential American climbers of the 20th century. His long, visionary, and diverse career spanned all types of terrain, literature, and equipment and business innovations. Most American climbers (i...
Less than a year before the 100th anniversary of the legendary Everest expedition of Mallory and Irvine, the passing of mountaineering historian Audrey Salkeld severed a vital link with the pioneer climbers. Born in London in 1936, she could stil...
William “Al” Read, a.k.a. “The Great Yak” of Moose, Wyoming, passed away peacefully on January 15, 2024, in San Francisco from lung disease. His wife, Susan, and daughter, Kristen, were by his side. He was 87. Al’s childhood years were spent in A...
“I would rather live 40 years of excitement and fun and exhilarating and just WOO full volume than 80 years of la-di-da-di-da. You know...boring,” Ammon McNeely said in 2006 while filming El Cap Pirate. “Why not get out there and live it?” Loved ...
Linda McMillan, loving wife and mother, and advocate for mountain preservation and primitive mountain recreation, passed away peacefully on May 14. Her last days were in Moab, Utah, surrounded by family, after a decade-long courageous battle again...
Joseph Hobby climbs a rock step in the Small Talk Couloir of Mantok 1. Photo by Fred Caloggero. The little-visited Yentna Glacier, west of the Kahiltna Glacier system, is sandwiched between the southwestern buttress of Mt. Foraker and the no...
National Park Service (NPS) mountaineering rangers treated a total of 33 patients during the 2023 climbing season in the Alaska Range. The following list provides a breakdown of the diagnoses. (Some patients had multiple diagnoses.) • Traumatic I...
In May, Americans Nik Berry and Will Sharp completed Daddy Issues (5.13+) on Middle Cathedral’s north face. The partial new route follows the first ten pitches of Father Time (AAJ 2013) before moving right off a bivy ledge into four new pitches of...
Brandon Adams leading the 11th pitch of Gaia, which would become the aid crux of the route at A3+. Photo by Lance Colley. In the spring of 2023, while walking along the base of Middle Cathedral Rock’s north face, Brandon Adams and I stumbled ...
It’s a funny story: My first time hiking in to climb the Incredible Hulk was in 2003 with my friend Allen Currano. He caught wind of a prank I was going to pull, and he found a way to meet me at my own juvenile level. We both changed into spandex ...
The route line for Choose Joy (12 pitches, IV 5.13a) on the Incredible Hulk. Photo: Abel Jones. Over 15 years of exploring and countless days of dreaming led to the discovery of a new route on the tallest section of the Incredible Hulk in the...