Mazamas. The year began with the annual climbing school in April, when more than 400 basic-mountaineering students enrolled in the lectures and field trips under Jack Grauer’s direction. The Climbing Committee’s 1958 climbing schedule included abo...
Icefields. Thomas Wharton, Washington Square Press, 1996. Paper. $12.00Icefields is a novel of subtle and singular beauty. The author, Thomas Wharton, takes us along on an actual 1898 Columbia Icefields outing with Norman Collie and Edward Byrne, ...
The Second American Ascent of Mont Blanc(Dr. Talbot—1854)Dr. Israel Tisdale Talbot, who made the second complete American ascent of Mont Blanc, was born at Sharon, Mass., in 1829, and died at Boston in 1899. Graduating from Homeopathic Medical Col...
RAPPEL ERROR–NO BACK-UP ON RAPPEL, FALL ON ROCK, BEING IN A HURRYWyoming, Grand Teton National Park, Grand Teton, Owen-SpaldingOn July 18, Ryan Sasser (27) and I, Holly Beck (26), got a late start out of our Moraine Camp on the Grand Teton due to ...
Magic Islands of LofotenEd WebsterIT TOOK NEARLY FOUR HOURS for the ferry boat to cross the cold sea from Bodø on the Norwegian mainland to Moskensøy, southernmost of the Lofoten Islands. I stood outside on the ferry’s upper deck, buffeted by a st...
Peñon Blanco, Via Lactea. Oriol Anglada (Catalonia) and Marisol Monterrubio (Mexico) opened Via Lactea (270m, 7 pitches, 5.12c [5.12a C2 obi.]) on the south face of Peñon Blanco, near Yerbanis in the high desert of Durango. The route ascends the m...
FALL ON SNOW–UNABLE TO SELF–ARREST DURING VOLUNTARY GLISSADE, POOR POSITION, WEATHERWashington, Mount Rainier National Park, Mount RuthOn June 22, a group of nine Mountaineers and I set off to attempt Mount Ruth, a spur-peak on the north-east flan...
Aconcagua Argentina. Alfredo Magnani and Luis A. Parra. Ediciones Dhaulagiri, Mendoza, Argentina, 1981. 84 pages, diagrams, maps. Spanish text. $18.00.It is fortunate that this, the first guidebook of Aconcagua, was prepared by the two persons who...
Bisoton, New Routes. Pascal Dauger, Arnaud Guillaume, and I made it to Iran on May 14. Getting visas was relatively easy: three weeks’ delay and 45 dollars. Nonetheless, the instability of the political situation was such that, by autumn, these vi...
Cayambe, North Side, Cotopaxi, Yanasacha Wall and Tungurahua, Southwest Flank and South Ridge. A new route on the north side of Cayambe (5789 meters, 18,993 feet) was completed on August 9, 1988 by four residents of Quito, some of them foreign: Lu...
Changabang, North Face, The Lightning Route. Carlos Buhler (U.S.) led a five-member team, four of whom (Andrei Volkov, Andrei Marei, Ivan Dusharin, Pavel Chabaline) were Russian, on a capsule-style ascent of the direct north face of the 6864-meter...
Tharkot, 1986, and Laspa Dhura, 1987. Our two Kumaon expeditions were joint ventures between the Indian Himalaya’s Beckon Club of Calcutta and British teams. In 1986 we travelled up the Sundardhunga valley and ascended Tharkot (6099 meters, 20,010...
FALL ON ROCK, RAPPEL ERROR–RAPPELLING TOO FAST, INEXPERIENCENorth Carolina, Great Smokey Mountain National ParkAround 2:30 p.m. on July 25, Adam Holenberg (23) was rappelling from a cliff above Rainbow Falls in the Cherokee Orchard area when he fe...
Adventures of an Alpine Guide, by Christian Klucker, translated by E. and P. Gaisberg ; edited, with additional chapters, by H. E. G. Tyndale, 8 vo., xiii + 329 pages, with sixteen illustrations, map and index. John Murray, London, England, 1932. ...
Jirishanca Chico, southeast face, Sweet Child of Mine. After we returned from the southeast face of Jirishanca Grande, realizing that we wouldn't have a chance to try again, I was nevertheless full of energy. The weather was still sunny, so I prop...
The Grace of Forgetting, by Geoffrey Winthrop Young. 352 pages, with 29 photographs and 5 line illustrations, including 2 maps by Leo Vernon. London: Country Life, 1953. Price, 21/—.Geoffrey Winthrop Young’s latest book is made up of memories—all ...
New Hampshire: Mt. Washington. On 15 October 1950 three young men who had just entered Harvard, J. M. Forbes, Harry Francis and John Humphreys, started up the Pinnacle of Huntinton Ravine. Forbes, having climbed it the year before, was leading. Th...
The biggest news of the 2010–11 season, not in the individual reports below, was the “fair-means” attempt to climb the Southeast Ridge of Cerro Torre (a.k.a. Compressor Route) by Canadians Chris Geisler and Jason Kruk. They had hoped to climb th...
FALL ON ROCK, IMPROPER HARNESS TIE-IN California, Joshua Tree National MonumentOn March 25, 1988, Paul Miller (24) fell eight meters while climbing Gap Rock on a route called ‘"Visual Nightmare” (5.10A). His rope came untied from his harness. Subj...
Sugarloaf Dome, Southwest Face. This face was climbed in June by Fred Beckey and me. Sugarloaf is the prominent formation across the Merced River from Bonnell Point in Little Yosemite Valley. Leave the trail at a point where you walk next to a cas...