After a couple of slow years, there seems to be an upswing of interest in new routes in southwestern B.C., including several new winter lines.In late February 2013, Bruce Kay and Damien Kelly climbed Fire Ball (500m, WI5 M5) on the west face of Mt...
In early April, Jonathan Crabtree, Charles Parr, Eli Sturm, and I explored a portion of Canada’s St. Elias Range, located within Kluane National Park. Our primary objective was the south face of Lowell Peak (11,910’, known as Pinnacle W4 on some m...
On May 7, pilot Paul Swanstrom flew Derek Buckle and me from Haines to ca 3,700’ on the lower Seward Glacier close to the Yukon border. The week prior, storms had broken precipitation records for much of neighboring southeast Alaska. Our objective...
On April 10 an eight-member expedition from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Alpine Club, led by Lim Il-jin, arrived in Phu. Here they hired a local guide to lead them to base camp (5,050m) on the Bharchapk Glacier. Lugula is the highest p...
The Organ Mountains are about 60 miles north of El Paso, Texas in southern New Mexico. The history of climbing in the Organs is vague prior to the 1940s, when a group of German rocket scientists began climbing technical routes. Royal Robbins estab...
During the summer and fall of 2013, I ferreted out two new lines on the monolith of Big Rock Candy Mountain while researching an upcoming guidebook. In June, Greg Miller and I put up the 11-pitch route Nicaraguan Nut Butter (1,300’, 5.9) ground-up...
There are few places anywhere in the world where you can approach multi-pitch alpine ice and mixed climbs with just 20 minutes’ walking. For better or worse, the Pikes Peak toll road delivers just that. Most of the classic rock and ice routes on t...
When Jacob Neathawk and I climbed a new start to the southwest corner on the Petit Grepon in Rocky Mountain National Park in September 2012, I realized that there was plenty of untapped terrain farther up the Sky Pond basin. So, in June 2013, Josh...
In August, Tommy Caldwell and Joe Mills redpointed the first 5.14 route on the Diamond on Longs Peak (14,259’), free-climbing the complete Dunn-Westbay (1972). After a number of days of work, Caldwell led the route free on August 21 in four rope-s...
Most people who climb on the Black Wall in summer can’t help but notice the seeps that prevent good rock climbing between the route Roofer Madness and the standard rappel route. The problem with climbing these seeps when they are frozen is that th...
During a warm weather window in early October, I completed the first ground-up free ascent of a new eight-pitch route on the Black Wall. Prior to the ascent, I had cleaned the route from the top down and worked the pitches with a Mini Traxion. Hig...
In July, Bill Grasse, Ben Kiessel, and Matt Pickren established Black in Action (8 pitches, III 5.10+ R) on a prominent pillar below the Cross Fissures Overlook, which is located along the South Rim of the canyon. Six pitches gain the top of the p...
Steve House and various partners established two new routes on Camp Bird Road during the 2013-2014 winter season. The first route, Goodnight Irene (900’, IV M5/6 PG13), was climbed by House and Ian Yurdin in November. The five-pitch route was esta...
In mid-August, Justin Griffin and Kyle Dempster went into the Deep Lake area to explore Haystack Mountain and work on free climbing the upper part of an old Jeff Lowe aid line at the southern end of the wall. Steve Bechtel had previously tried to ...
The south face of Wolfshead is the sunniest and cleanest wall in the Cirque of the Towers. Armed with the experience of opening earlier routes on this wall, Brandon Gust and I packed a single rope, four steel and three nylon brushes, and the requi...
August found Oliver Deshler and I once again back in the Winds with dreams much bigger than our abilities. Hiking beneath lumpen packs, we came in from the north, forded the Green River twice, and then bashed our way through steep, trailless deadf...
Josh Wharton and I, along with photographer John Dickey, made a 10-day horse-packing trip to Mt. Hooker, starting from Big Sandy. We first attempted a new route on the east face of Hooker, a sub-wall on the left shoulder; however, we bailed at a s...
David Allfrey, Mason Earle and I went to Mt. Hooker from August 8–24. After hiking in from Dickenson Park, we began scoping the cliff and found what we believed was the most continuously blank and steep part of the wall. Over the next few days we ...
In August, Jared Spaulding and I put up a new route in the northern Wind River Range, near New Fork Park, on the 800-1,200’ China Wall. We started on good rock on the leftmost part of the main wall, which required several points of aid through a s...
In August, Eva Christ and Jake Tipton climbed a new route on the west aspect of Fremont Peak in Titcomb Basin, summiting a sub-spire they called the Marmot’s Tooth. The spire lies just left (north) of the West Face Spire. They called the 12-pitch ...