Four Against MakaluJohn RoskelleyTHE SOUTH FACE of Makalu pierced a late afternoon azure sky as we dog-legged past the remnants of its southeast ridge and wearily reached French Base Camp at 16,000 feet. The deep, late winter snows that had hamper...
Torre Egger, near miss and monster fall. In early February, Jonny Copp, Josh Wharton, and I joined forces to climb in the Cerro Torre and Fitzroy area. We set our sights on Torre Egger. It had only seen one alpine-style ascent, its last ascent thr...
REVIEW OF ACCIDENTS—1952New Hampshire—Cannon Mountain: On July 4, 1952 a party of seven consisting of Gerald Barnes, Mabel Cody, Irwin Davis, John Gardner, Edith MacDonald, Kenneth Turner and “Skip” Voorhees intended to climb the Whitney-Gilman ro...
A Symphony of MountainsHans MoldenhauerI. Prelude 1941 (Grave)WHILE marching on, it seems quite hard to stop and to remember, in all the forward-swing of a new life that just began, in an entirely new world, in the endeavor to adjust oneself, and ...
Wyoming, Grand Teton National Park, Symmetry Spire. On 19 June Donald J. Peterson (29), Jerry L. DaBell (25), Rick DaBell (19), William H. Radtke (36), and Robert H. Deal (28) climbed Symmetry Spire by its North West route and reached the summit a...
Siachen Glacier Basin. The Imperial College Karakoram Expedition was sponsored and largely financed by the Imperial College of Science, London. The objectives were to fill in blanks on the map of the Siachen Glacier basin and adjacent areas and to...
On April 24, Ben Kiessel (27), Chris Scharf (38) and Chris Lackey (39) landed on the Root Canal Glacier below the South Face of the Moose’s Tooth with the intention of climbing the “Ham and Eggs” route. On April 27, they had climbed up to the ei...
By coincidence I took over the editorship of the American Alpine Journal the year the American Alpine Club turned 100. To commemorate the occasion, we devoted 60-some pages in the 2002 AAJ to looking back on AAC history and on events in American c...
Alpine-Style in the Tschang-TangA long pulk through Tibetby Frank KauperTRANSLATED BY CHRISTIANE LEITINGER“It’s torture—the hands cannot be used, the map rips, and one asks oneself if one can make it alive to the next camp! The lips are swollen an...
North Face of the Mönch and West Face of the BlaitièreJohn HarlinWINTER ASCENT OF THE MÖNCH S NORTH FACEThe day after our unsuccessful attempt at the direttissima on the Eigerwand, Martin Epp introduced himself, for he was at Scheidegg as a ski in...
Arizona, Santa Catalina Mountains—On April 20, 1954, three University fo Arizona students, William Bingham (21), Robert Frederick (21) and Ned Cranston (21) started up Mt. Lemmon to find Picture Rock and Finger Rock. Late in the afternoon, Bingham...
Parallel worlds: the American (left) and Russian teams hard at work on the headwall pitches on Great Trango's northwest face. Photo by Yuri Koshelenko. I first heard the name Trango in 1992, when I had just begun climbing in competitions.* Th...
Amin Brakk, partial new route. The Russian Extreme Project, comprising climbers Sergey Kovalev, Alexander Lastochkin, Valery Rozov and Arcady Seregin with cameramen Lev Dorfman and Dmitry Lifanov, climbed a partial new route on the ca 1,250m West ...
Stranger Than Fact: The Climber in FictionE. Cushing and J. M. Thorington“But you, too, have climbed,” Chayne cried at length.“On winter nights by my fireside,” replied Garratt Skinner with a smile. “I have a game leg which would hinder me.”— (The...
HENRY CECIL JOHN HUNT 1910-1999Lord Hunt, who led the successful British expedition that made the first ascent of Everest, and who was an honorary member of The American Alpine Club, died on November 8, 1998. He was 89.Some men do things right. Jo...
CANFIELD BEATTIE 1900–1987Dr. Canfield Beattie died on August 18, 1987 in Portland, Oregon at the age of 86. He was a long-time member of both the American Alpine Club and the Alpine Club of Canada, having joined the AAC in 1935 and the ACC in 193...
Uli Byapjun; Uli Biaho Great Spire, first ascent; Base Camp Slabs, Piranski zaliv; Trango Tower, Eternal Flame, one-day ascent. Many climbers say that late summer weather in Karakoram is more suitable for rock climbing, so our group chose that tim...
Cuerno Principal, Variant to Line of First Ascent. Alexandra Schultheis, Michael Cross, and I traveled to Chilean Patagonia for a week-long stay in Towers of Paine National Park. During our visit we attempted a new rock route on the the highest of...
Fatal Mountaineer: The High-Altitude Life and Death of Willi Unsoeld, American Himalayan Legend. Robert Roper. New York: St. Martins Press, 2002.306 pages. Hardcover. $25.95.I will begin this review with a disclaimer. As far as I can remember, I n...
Lama Lamani North (5,650m), west face; Peak 5,500m; Jopuno (5,936m), west ridge, attempt. Inspired by the writing of British mountaineer Roger Payne (AAJ 2008), Geoff Cohen, Bob Hamilton, Dick Isherwood, Steve Kennedy, Dave Ritchie (all UK), and I...