Isosceles Peak, West Face. In August Allan Pietrasanta and I made the first ascent of this face, the one for which the peak is named. Our line follows the central crack and chimney system that almost perfectly bisects the isosceles triangle. NCCS ...
Evolution Peaks, Grand Traverse. The Evolution Peaks were judged to be the scenic culmination of the High Sierra by the 19th century scrambler Theodore Solomons, who named them after the great evolutionary scientists and thinkers of the time. Loca...
FALL ON ROCK, CLIMBING ALONE AND UNROPED, NO HARD HATNew Hampshire, Rattlesnake MountainOn March 16, 1994, Stephen Williams (27) fell 90 feet from a climb on Rattlesnake Mountain, near Rumney, fracturing his pelvis and suffering other injuries tha...
Garuda Bank. In May I took five undergraduate students of St. Stephens College, Dehli University, Ashok Chakravarti, Amrish Thomas, Gursev Singh, Sandeep Bagchi and Verhese Varkki, on a training expedition; only a couple of them had had previous e...
Daxuetang-feng (5,364m), second ascent, new route. Daxuetang-feng is a well-known mountain visible from the road from Chengdu to Balang Pass (south of Rilong and the Siguiniang massif). More than 10 Chinese teams have tried to climb this peak. On ...
Finger Dome, South Face, 1981. When making the hike from near Wishon Dam to Crown Valley, the usual route to Tehepite Dome and the Obelisk, the seemingly misplaced rock formation of Finger Dome is a magnet to the eye. Not knowing of any visitation...
SLIP ON SNOW, COLLAPSED SNOW LEDGE Alaska, Mt. McKinleyOn May 22, 1979, Ken Currens (25) and Jack Tackle (25) were climbing at 10,000 feet on the southwest face of Mt. McKinley. Their route was a ridge on the west wall of the Northwest Spur of the...
Attempts on Unclimbed Peaks Pasang Lhamu and Cho Polu. Plans to make the first ascents of two peaks by any routes failed. The highest of these, Jasamba (7351 meters), on a ridge just south of Cho Oyu (officially renamed Pasang Lhamu Peak in honor ...
Chilean Reconnaissance in the Cordillera Huayhuash. Five climbers affiliated with the Federación de Andinismo took part in an expedition of reconnaissance and exploration in the Cordillera Huayhuash. Our specific mission was to locate a mountain r...
Columbia Peak, South Ridge. This often-climbed peak in the famous Monte Cristo area has a spectacular mile-long, steep-walled South Ridge that is probably photographed by nearly every party to climb the mountain. On September 12, from a high camp ...
Unnamed Peak N. E. of Mt. Erasmus. This mountain (about 10,400 ft.), prominently visible from the Banff-Jasper Highway N. of the Saskatchewan Bridge, was climbed on 28 June 1951 by A. E. Creswell and Fred Ayres. It stands just across the river fro...
Haystack Mountain. Haystack mountain is a long north-south ridge with a buttress at the north end where the valley floor drops away. There were two grade-IV routes on the north end and several easier 5th-class routes further south but nothing in b...
FALLING ROCKAlberta, Banff National Park, Mount LittleOn August 29, a party of four was ascending the normal route on Mount Little during an Association of Canadian Mountain Guides Assistant Alpine Guide exam. Two candidates were roped together an...
Peaks in Los Tilos Valley. A total of 31 mountaineers belonging to five different regional asociaciones (branches) of the Federatión de Andinismo de Chile entered from the coastal town of La Serena into the Pastos Largos region and explored the va...
Nevado de los Tambillos, 1976. Northern Andes. Unreported until recently, an Argentinian expedition had made on March 12, 1976 the second ascent of Nevado de los Tambillos (5800 meters, 19,029 feet), located on the Chilean-Argentinian border, nort...
Mt. Hunter, Wall of Shadows Variation; Mt. McKinley, Common Knowledge. British climbers Ben Gilmore and Kevin Mahoney made the second ascent, with a variant start, of Wall of Shadows (VI, WI6 mixed, 5.9 A2), the Child-Kennedy 1994 route on the nor...
The west escarpment of Mt. Ritter (13,157') stretches over the headwaters of the San Joaquin River. This impressive wall is steep and the rock suspect, but an arête leading from Ritter Lakes basin to the summit too hard to resist, especial...
Moditse or Annapurna South. A French expedition put Gérard Devou- assoux and Maurice Gicquel onto the summit of Moditse or Annapurna South (23,600 feet) on October 27. They climbed it from the south with a bivouac above their 22,500-feet camp. The...
FAILURE OF RAPPEL, NO HARD HAT, INADEQUATE PROTECTION, INEXPERIENCEWyoming, TetonsAround 4:30 p.m. on September 7, 1981, Joe Bailey (23) was descending from the summit of Nez Perce. He set up a rappel at 11,500 feet despite the fact that his partn...
FALL ON ROCKOregon, Mount Hood, Sandy Glacier HeadwallOn June 20, James Frankenfield (39) and Iain Morris (23) were on the Sandy Glacier Headwall route on Mount Hood. At 0730, while traversing above the glacier to the headwall, they were involved ...