Jannu, west pillar. After their ascent of Merra Peak, reported above, Valery Babanov and Sergey Kofanov made the first ascent of the west pillar of 7,710m Jannu. The pair left base camp at 4,700m on October 14 and reached the summit on the morning...
There’s nothing neutral about Mt. Edgar. It’s stunning and savage. It’s beautiful and deadly. It’s amazing climbing with incredible dangers. Kyle Dempster and I stepped into the Casino Edgar in November of 2010. We didn’t lose our shirts, but the ...
Miyar Nala Area, Various Ascents. In this part of Great Himalayan Range there are a lot of unclimbed and unnamed peaks with heights between 5500 and 6500 meters. Four virgin peaks were climbed during two different Italian expeditions in 1992 and 1...
Olympic National ParkSawtooth Ridge, complete traverse. From August 7 to 9 Wayne Wallace and I made the first full traverse of the remote and rugged Sawtooth Ridge in the Olympic Mountains. Known for its relatively good rock (for volcanic), the ri...
Steve Hackett, 1945–2011The Kachemak Nordic Ski Club and the community of Homer lost a valuable member when Steve Hackett, 65, passed away while skiing at Arctic Valley on February 26. He had been at a PSIA ski instructors workshop on a blue cold ...
Mt. Monarch, North Ridge, New Route. From August 4-7, on my fifth attempt of the route (the first way back in 1983), Bill Durtler, Bruce Fairley, and I finally made the first ascent of the North Ridge of Mount Monarch (3573m), the “big” peak south...
Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life. Arlene Blum. New York: Scribner, 2005. Black and WHITE PHOTOS. 313 PAGES. Hardcover. $27.50.If ever there has been an iconic figure in the canon of womens mountaineering literature Arlene Blum is she. Blum can be c...
Cleaver, Cleavage Dreamer and Southeast Arête. Imagine a dead-vertical alpine wall a thousand feet tall and a thousand feet wide, the summit over 13,000', countless virgin vertical crack systems, and only a few hours’ hike from a trailhead. This i...
The Undiscovered Country. Phil Bartlett. The Ernest Press, Holyhead, Wales. 183 pages, 62 black-and-white photographs. £15.95.“Theoretical studies of mountaineering have generally received bad press,” Bartlett writes. His own book, however, will p...
Patagonia—Dreams and RealityTommy Bonapace, Österreichischer AlpenvereinFOR SOME WEEKS, we had been enjoying our existence in a hut near the waters of Laguna Torre. We sat in front of the warming fire, alternately whittling on a stick of wood, rea...
In early March, Jeremy Aslaksen and I explored the virtually unclimbed east face of the Titan in the Fisher Towers. The only route on the face is an old Jim Beyer route, World’s End, which climbs the extreme left margin. After climbing f...
Ascent of Mount La PerouseJames F. SeitzAS part of our job last summer five of us had the pleasant task of climbing Mount La Perouse, a previously unclimbed mountain in the Fairweather Range, Alaska. We were members of a U. S. Geological Survey pa...
Vampire Spire, Nosferatu. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon when the three of us reached the oddly sloping ledge 100m from the summit of Vampire Spire. “No one’s ever set foot on this ledge before,” I observed as I crunched across the lichen-encr...
The Logan Mountains, 1960William J. BuckinghamTHE INTERIOR of the Yukon Territory and the western portion of the Northwest Territory of Canada is a vast wilderness studded with mountain ranges, few of which have attracted much attention in climbin...
Himalayan Fatalities, 1986. I have read with considerable interest the pages devoted to the Himalaya. On the basis of these reports, there seem to have been 44 deaths in 1986. That in itself may not seem noteworthy related to the overall number of...
Expeditions to Nowhere. Paddy Sherman. The Mountaineers. Seattle, 1981. 226 pages, black-and-white photographs, maps. $14.95.Care to travel far and fast? Then read Expeditions to Nowhere, a summary account of expeditions undertaken during two deca...
La Mascara, Ilusiones, New Route. Eva Martos, Diego Pelaez, and I got to Torres del Paine National Park on January 8. We arrived later than expected, so we lost some time trying to get the permits. We had to leave our climbing gear at the entrance...
Huaytapallana I and Huaytapallana II, east summit, first ascents. I first spotted the climbing potential at the top of Quebrada Rajaruri, southwest of the Huandoy Group, in 2006 while on a day trek with my wife. In 2007 Jim Sykes and I made the fi...
FALL ON ROCK, INADEQUATE PROTECTION, MISUSE OF EQUIPMENT (GRIGRI), NO HARD HATCalifornia, Yosemite Valley, Half DomeOn September 14, a clear day, Bela Christopher (Chris) Fehrer (35) was solo climbing the slab route when he fell 100 to 150 feet to...
California, Mt. Whitney area. On 29 May Jeff Genest and Larry Hamilton (20), started from Whitney Portals (8,360 feet) at 0600 with the intention of climbing the buttress of Mt. Whitney. They had started from home at sea level and driven all night...