FROSTBITEAlaska, Mount McKinleyIn early May, a six-member party, the Index Alpine Club Expedition, flew to the Kahiltna Glacier to climb the West Buttress of Mount McKinley. On May 16, Alan Jennings (32) was frostbitten on his left foot while asce...
The Shark’s Fin ReduxSuccess at last on Meru Central’s spectacular Shark’s Fin, India.Jimmy ChinThe last move was merely a mantle: hands on the edge of a sharp granite ledge, a heel hook, and a press. When I pulled over the lip, I looked around, m...
Reflections On Guideless ClimbingNoel E. Odell“THE mountains are so kindly and so great that they reject none of those who turn to them, and they are good to all; to the men of science who come to study them; to the painters and poets who seek an ...
Silver Star Mountain, Central Couloir to near West Summit. Anne Keller and I had both noticed a classic-looking alpine couloir splitting the west face of Silver Star (8,800'), and I couldn’t wait for spring. The 1,900-foot-long ribbon of steep sno...
Mount Saint Elias- Southwest ButtressRuedi Homberger, Schweizer Alpen Club In Memory of Miroslav ŠmidI FIRST SAW MOUNT SAINT ELIAS as I was ascending Mount Logan in 1991. The plan to climb this magnificent peak developed slowly. As the highest coa...
Cambridge Arctic Canada Expedition, Cumberland Peninsula, Baffin Island. Robert E. Langford, leader, T. A. J. Goodfellow, A. R. Crofts, G. F. Bonham-Carter, C. W. Barlow and J. W. Dale, all from Cambridge University, spent two summer months on Baf...
In January 2000, I led an exploratory mountaineering expedition to climb a group of unnamed, unvisited peaks located within the boundaries of Chile’s Hornopiren National Park (latitude 42° S; topo map H-73: Rio Traidor). The peaks surround an exte...
Lone Pine Peak, Winter Chimney, first winter ascent. On March 11 Scott Nelson and I made the first winter ascent of the Winter Chimney (Carmona-LeMay, July 2005) on the south face of Lone Pine Peak (12,994'). The route starts up the classic Winter...
Gaurishankar, South Summit. Gaurishankar is a twin-peaked mountain. Its northern summit is 23,440 feet high and its southern one 23,000 feet. Before 1964 six expeditions tried unsuccessfully to climb the mountain. The Buddhist Sherpas living south...
Spokane Mountaineers. Twenty-five graduates of the 1968 climbing school and 10 instructors camped in Whitewater Basin for a Selkirk graduation outing. On May 12 climbing chairman Frank Tavares led a party of 21 to the 9514-foot summit of Mount Bre...
In alpine climbing you do your best to anticipate the potential crux of a trip. You physically and mentally prepare for bad weather, loose rock, huge days, anything you can imagine. This time getting on the airplane and deciding to go was the hard...
On Ice. Directed by Scott and Eden Ayer. Cliffhanger Productions, 1995. Video, 62 minutes. $29.95.With all the renewed interest in waterfall climbing and mixed rock and ice climbing, it only comes as a surprise that instructional and entertaining ...
Alberta, Rockies, Tower of Babel. On August 20, Brian Greenwood (32) and Charles Locke (21) were on the third day of a new face route on the Tower of Babel above Maligne Lake in the Rockies. They were leading alternately and were about 250 feet be...
Mitre Peak, North Side. Milford Sound, in southwest New Zealand, lies in a spectacular glacial valley, reminiscent of Yosemite. Reminiscent, that is, if one considers only the sweep of its walls; any further resemblance is literally drowned by the...
Peak Southeast of Koh-i-Marchech. While leading a trekking party for the Sierra Club this summer, I climbed with Thomas Myers of New York a peak whose summit contained no evidence of prior ascent. Some six miles southeast of Koh-i-Marchech, it is ...
Mt. Blackhorn, Northwest Couloir. On September 27 I made what I believe was the first ascent of Blackhorn Mountain’s Northwest Couloir. Mike King flew Don Serl, Dan Aylward, and me from Bluff Lake to the base of the couloir on the evening before, ...
RAPPEL FAILURE–ANCHOR CAME APART, INADEQUATE PROTECTIONWyoming, Grand Teton National Park, Garnet CanyonOn September 15 about 1930, Julien Roques (20) fell 350 feet from the third pitch of the Open Book in Garnet Canyon. He sustained severe injuri...
Fisher Towers, Cottontail Tower, Trick of the Tail. From September 9 to 12, Jeremy Aslaksen and I climbed a new route on the north face of Cottontail Tower in the Fisher Towers: Trick of the Tail, V 5.10+ A3. Jeremy had spent a weekend scoping the...
San Lorenzo, East Face. On January 15 Erwin Müller, Russell Dodding, Hans-Peter Bakker and I reached the summit of San Lorenzo (3706 meters, 12,159 meters), the first party ever to climb the mountain from the Argentine side. We had made an unsucce...
Pumasillo - 1956DAVID MICHAELThe Cordillera Vilcabamba is situated north-northwest of Cusco, bounded on the north by the Urubamba and Vilcabamba rivers, and on the south by the Rio Apurimac. It extends east- west for 20 miles, the major terminal m...