From April 25–27, Glen Melin, Jon Tylka, and I made the first recorded traverse of the Organ Mountains skyline, climbing from south to north. The Organ Mountains form the rugged barrier between the Tularosa Basin and the Mesilla Valley in southern...
On April 27, Yuri Kilichenko, Makcym Perevalov, Petro Pobebeghnyi, and Yuri Vasenkov from Ukraine completed a new route on the ca 900m east face of Lobuche (Lobuje or Lubuje) East. Incorrectly marked as Abi on the official HMG-Finn map of the Khum...
Janahut (6,805m) had been attempted by five previous teams. In June we (Malcolm Bass and Simon Yearsley) became the sixth—and the sixth team to fail. Our original goal had been the southwest face of Rimo III, which we had attempted in 2012 (AAJ 20...
In June, Italians Marco Erbetta, Enrico Rosso, and Father Antonio Zavattarelli, the latter a missionary in Penas, made an unsuccessful attempt on the south spur of the west ridge on Pico Norte (6,403m). Other members of the team were Paola Anzola ...
Chaukhamba Col lies northeast of Chaukhamba I (7,138m), on the ridge connecting it with Januhut (6,805m). A crossing of this col, from the Bhagat Kharat to Gangotri glaciers, forming the most direct route between the two famous pilgrimage sites of...
A small British party made, more or less, the first ascent of a previously unnamed 6,000m peak in the range running southeast from Kang Yissay (6,400m). They stopped eight meters below the summit, beneath a very rotten cone of rock.Led by Douglas ...
In the post-monsoon a team of eight German females made first ascents in the Satling group south of impressive Thalay Sagar. The Satling Valley had been visited by Martin Moran (AAJ 2003) and Tom Dauer (AAJ 2005), but while both described the high...
Overshadowed by its more extensive neighbour, the Durung Drung Valley immediately east, the Pensilungpa Valley is rarely visited. It does, however, have some fine unclimbed mountains, as Mike Pinney, Chris Storie, Tony Westcott, and I found on our...
On October 2, Stefano Suplizi, Lorenzo Trento, and I climbed a small peak in the Tos Valley. From Manikaran, via Tos village, we followed the Tos River for three days to a base camp at Samshi Thacth (3,800m). From here we had to cross to the east ...
Kokankada is the ca 600m concave cliff, over 1.5km in length, on the southwest side of Harischandragad Fort (Maharashtra). It is the most scenic natural formation in the Sahyadri. In December 1985 a team from Mumbai made the first ascent of the so...
A team of 12 mountaineers from the Indian Air Force, plus Sherpas, explored the little-known Rongdo Valley in May–June, summiting seven peaks, of which six were above 6,000m. Only two mountaineering expeditions have visited this region before (AAJ...
The Kolkata section of the Himalayan Club visited the Saser Kangri Group in July-August, with the aim of making the first ascent of Plateau Peak. Although several teams have tried Plateau Peak in the past, either from the west via the South Phukpo...
In August I traveled to Ladakh and climbed two previously virgin peaks on the southern rim of the Palzampiu Valley. My goal had been to reach the restricted area of the Siachen Glacier, but all expeditions, including one from the Indian Air Force,...
In August, Sandeep Nain, Jason Schilling, and I headed up the Miyar Valley with two cooks and eight horses, against the flow of shepherds and their flocks moving to the lowlands of Himachal and the Punjab. The incredible scenery was enough to keep...
For 20 days in September, Carloncho Guerra, Aztlan Madio, and I visited the Miyar, intending to climb new rock routes. We took a public bus to the road head and didn't hire porters, horses, or even a cook for base camp. With bad weather and heavy ...
From the summit of Kuchela Dhura, a sharp, three-kilometer ridge runs southwest toward Nanda Kot (6,861m), and the idea of climbing it came to mind in 2011, when I was on the upper section of nearby Changuch (AAJ 2012). In 2012 I organized an expe...
The start of this trip was particularly stressful, as the political situation in Kishtwar had become tense following the deaths of several people in a protest. As a result, our permit was only confirmed a couple of days before we were due to arriv...
With Pakistan travel plans falling through, my good friend James Monypenny (U.K.) and I quickly regrouped. With nothing more than a photograph and an incredibly vague topographical map, we set our sights on a previously unattempted 6,060m granite ...
In 2012 the Scottish Zanskar Expedition attempted a couple of unclimbed 6,000m peaks in the Namkha Tokpo (AAJ 2013). One succumbed, but the other (G22) showed an unexpected lack of consideration. However, a potential route up the south face was sp...
In June, Jonn Jeanneret, Dan Kopperud, Jake Preston, Gabriel Thomas, and I (Australian or American, but all based in Asia) traveled to India to attempt a peak in the Gangotri. On the 17th, Uttarakhand state was hit by the largest flash flood in ne...