Lotus Flower Tower, Logan Mountains, Second Ascent. On August 12 a British Columbia-Yukon Air Service seaplane took Joël Coqueugniot, Patrick Cordier, Mlle Marie-Françoise Gay and me to Glacier Lake. The weather was gorgeous, but we learned that t...
Gaurishankar Attempt. After two weeks of bureaucracy in Kathmandu, Iñaki Alvarez, Koldo Tapia, Txema Cámara and I were finally able to take the bus to Charikot, arriving there on September 11. The approach was very difficult because of the monsoon...
Ganchempo, South Face. On Ganchempo (or Gang Chhenpo, 6387m), in north central Nepal, a team of six Swiss led by Karl Kobler and Christoph Jezler succeeded in making a new route to the summit. One member, Markus Baumann, and a Nepalese “Sherpa” na...
Mana. A 32-man team of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police was led by Company Commander Harbhajan Singh. They left Joshimath on April 15, but due to a road block eleven kilometers short of Malari, had to trek 78 kilometers to Base Camp; snow had destro...
Kohe Shan, Urgund Group, Wakhan. Our expedition, consisting of Professor Alberti, Sinigoi, Predonzan, Stefanini, L. Corsi, W. Romano, Ricatti and me as leader, left Trieste on July 9 overland for Afghanistan. About a month later we were in the Urg...
Cho Oyu. In the post-monsoon period of 1953, Austrian Dr. Herbert Tichy climbed in Northwestern Nepal five or six 20,000- foot peaks, including Kangdemur (21,259 feet). His attempt on Saipal in December failed because of supply difficulties. In 19...
Western Peaks of the Cordillera Raura. Pierluigi Bernasconi, Giuseppe Franzin, my wife Mariola and I drove to Surasacacocha and placed Base Camp at 14,100 feet just south of the lake. Despite poor weather we placed a camp at 15,100 feet in the Que...
Mustagh Ata. This big peak (7546 meters, 24,758 feet) is so frequently climbed by large private and commercial groups that we cannot report on all such expeditions. In 1988 there were groups from Sweden, Italy and France, possibly more. On July 20...
The Fifth Column, Yodel This. In the summer of 1995, I noticed a beautiful wall just over the Garnet Canyon trail. That evening I consulted the pink bible, otherwise known as the Ortenburger/Jackson Climber’s Guide to the Tetons, and found that th...
Trango Nameless Tower. On August 13, Cho Dukkyu, Cho Chonghwan, So Hoyoung and I completed the ascent of the Slovene route on the Nameless Tower. The other two members of our expedition were leader Sunwoo Choongok and Kim Cheol. After driving to A...
Kangtega Attempt. Four Swiss led by Hans Rauner attempted the southeast face of Kangtega (6779 meters, 22,241 feet). They reached a high point of 6600 meters on December 1.Elizabeth Hawley
In October Dave Turnbull and I, with Graham Desroy and Jonny Ratcliffe, visited West Nepal. Graham and Jonny’s activity is recorded below. Dave and I made the first ascent of a mountain called Gojung. Formerly referred to as Mugu Chuli, this summi...
INADEQUATE WATER, FATIGUE, LOSS OF GEAR, UNABLE TO CONTINUE CLIMBINGCalifornia, Yosemite Valley, El CapitanOn July 3, Japanese climber Hideki Inaba (33) began a solo climb of Cosmos (VI 5.9 A4). He had chosen it because he thought it was a beautif...
K2, Amical Alpin Expedition and the Death of Steve Untch. Our international expedition included New Zealander Rob Hall. Finn Veikka Gustafsson, Frenchmen Dr. Philippe Arvis and Alain Roussey, and Germans Henning Paschke, Rodja Ratteit, Axel Schlön...
EXCEEDING ABILITIES - OFF ROUTE, INADEQUATE EQUIPMENT AND WATER, HYPOTHERMIA, FROSTBITEAlaska, Mount McKinleyOn May 3, the Densan party from Great Britain arrived at Kahiltna basecamp, 7,200 feet on the Kahiltna Glacier. The three members of this ...
Solitude on K2Pierre Beghin, Groupe de Haute MontagneIT WAS ON THE SOUTH FACE OF Lhotse that I really got to know Christophe Profit. In October of 1990, we lived together on that forbidding wall during an adventure of the kind we both love: a simp...
Dawa Peak, Snotty’s Gully, second ascent; Phari Lapcha, The End of the Beginning, first ascent. Halvor Dannevig and I traveled to the upper Khumbu, hoping to find interesting climbing on “not too high” peaks. We consider how we do it to be more im...
Front Range Section. As a result of the AAC Sections Committee’s work, the Central Rockies Section was divided into smaller, more locally focused sections. One of them is the Front Range Section, composed of the eastern half of Colorado and the so...
Prusik Peak, 1984. My brother Ted, Dan Nordstrom and I made a free climb west of the Stanley-Burgner route on August 13, 1984. The climb begins under a triangular overhang in the large dihedral system left of the south-face chimney. Three rope-len...
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest. Wade Davis. Knopf, 2011. 672 pages. Black & white photos. Hardcover. $32.50.I begin with a confession. Opening Wade Davis’s Into the Silence for the first time, I found it ...