FALL ON SNOW, SKIING, INEXPERIENCE British Columbia, Coast Mountains, Wedge MountainA party of four had been helicoptered to the summit of Wedge Mountain on July 7, 1980, and was descending the northwest couloir on skis. Gerhard Slinger (27) had s...
Aleta del Tiburon, West Face. In March, 1997, a Chilean expedition called Amerindia II climbed two variations to the normal route in two teams. Team A, Claudio Retamal and Danielo Benavente, climbed Ilusión Para Dos (5.8) in 15 pitches from 7 a.m....
CANADAINADEQUATE BELAY-CLIMBER LOWERED TOO QUICKLYAlberta, Jasper National Park, Malign CanyonOn February 10, at 1600, a Jasper Warden was contacted via cell phone by B.C., who reported his partner had stabbed his right knee with his left crampon ...
Broken Tooth South Face. Mugs Stump and Steve Quinlan completed a new route, the second, on the Broken Tooth in mid-May, when they spent four days on the south face. They found two good bivouac sites a third and two-thirds of the way up the 22 pit...
Chulu West. A four-man Taiwanese team was under my leadership. On April 12 Chang Ming-lung and Jangbu Sherpa reached the summit of Chulu West (6583 meters, 21,598 feet) at 6:10 P.M. They had spent ten hours from Camp II at 20,000 feet because of t...
On June 8 Žarko Trušnovec, Slavko Sveticic, Milan Cernilogar and I set up Base Camp at 14,750 feet in the Aguas Calientes valley. After some bad weather we moved up to bivouac on the glacier below the northwest face of Illampu, but without Cernilo...
Caucasus Ski Traverse. I made two attempts on the ski traverse of the Caucasus. The first attempt was in 1994, in which the party managed the first part of the traverse. On the second attempt the party failed on the first part, but completed the s...
Peaks in the Cordilleras de Potosí and Quimsa Cruz. Few ascents in the Cordillera de Potosí have been reported since 1903. This is a range of unglaciated rock peaks, located east of that famous colonial city. The first mountaineer to visit it was ...
PROBABLE CORNICE COLLAPSE, CLIMBING ALONEWashington, Mount IndexOn March 23, 1982, Alan Van Lue (29) left his vehicle at a KOA campground near Mount Index. On March 27, when he had not returned for it, the campground management notified the sherif...
At 0030 on August 9, 1984, Todd Mazzola (22) and Michael Dougherty (22) reported that they, their climbing partner, Craig Thomas (26) and a separate climbing party, Paul Augustine (40) and Eric Hutchinson (20), were sleeping on Dinner Ledge on the...
Caliban, Xanadu, The Maidens and Shot Tower, Arrigetch Peaks, Brooks Range. In Late June and early July, Bob McGregor, Yan Marrand, Gary Brill and I flew to Circle Lake from Betties and then hiked to an airdrop site near the head of Arrigetch Cree...
Ascents in the Gangotri Region. Many expeditions are now repeating previously ascended climbs in the Gangotri region, particularly in Kedarnath Dome, Bhagirathi II and the Jogin peaks. Possibly the most important ascent for which we lack details i...
Mealy Range Ski Traverse, Southern Labrador. Dartmouth student Dean Engle (recipient of an American Alpine Club Climbing Fellowship grant) organized our team of Dave McIndoe, Joe Catarini and me to conduct the first-known ski traverse of the Mealy...
CORNICE COLLAPSEAlberta, Rocky Mountains, Mount BelangerOn December 11, 1988, Heidi Schaefer (24) and Ken Wallator (21) were climbing Mount Belanger, a 3060 meter peak south of Jasper. About 1300, they had just got off the face, finishing the tech...
RICH DAVIDSON1950-1996Rich Davidson, 46, of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and his tent mate Debbie Marshall, 31, of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, died while climbing Annapurna IV in Nepal on October 4. The two suffocated in their sleep at 18,000 feet when...
Matho Kangri, Stok Area, Ladakh. On July 23 Claude Buhler, Jacques Prillieux, liaison officer C.R. Thakur and I made the first ascent of Matho Kangri (6030 meters, 19,784 feet). We left from Matho village with three donkeys and that same day reach...
Devils Tower. A small party of climbers, some of them members of this club, were prevented from making an attempt on this summit by the National Park Service which administers this odd monolith as a national monument. While we can fully sympathize...
These towers, insignificant from Mendenhall valley and small in comparison to many Alaskan peaks, must be seen from close at hand to be properly appreciated. Not “giant”, but “big” (2000-foot) walls abound here; seven towers with buttresses, rid...
Mount Index, South-North Traverse of the Three Peaks. The traverse of the three peaks of Index was a project that had for some time interested me. This traverse had been done only once before, when in 1951 it had been made from north to south. In ...
Kangchenjunga, First Female Ascent. My husband, Gary Pfisterer, and I led an international expedition to climb the north face of Kangchenjunga (8586m) in the spring. We were a small team of three Americans (Gary, Chris Shaw, Tim Horvath), one Cana...