Manaslu Tragedy. Our climbing members were Nancy Jackson, John Petroske, Dr. Charles Schertz, Steve Stockmyer, Howard Weaver, Canadian Dr. John Haigh and I as leader. Dave Gordon was Base Camp manager. We left Gorkha on March 3 with 120 porters an...
Vertigo Games is a collection of chatty, informal tales of Colorado climbing from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s. All major areas are represented, as are many minor ones, with rock climbing justifiably being the major focus. The text is liberall...
Ali Ratni Tibba, West Face, Kulu. Our seven-man expedition went to Kulu to climb alpine-style. On June 4 to 6 Alan Burgess, Bob Toogood, Bob Dearman and I climbed the 4500-foot-high granite west face of Ali Ratni Tibba. Spending 2½ days on the fac...
Everest. Our members were Patxi Fernández, Mikel Reparaz, Juan Tomás, José Ramón Zubizarreta, Félix Iñurrategui, Juan María Eguillor, Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, Josu Bereciartua, Alberto Iñurrategui and I as leader. We climbed the standard South Col rou...
Spokane Mountaineers. A seasoned organization founded in Spokane in 1915 makes its AAJ debut in this report. It was easily predictable that a climbing club should have an early start in such surroundings as those accessible from Spokane. Here with...
Mercedario, First Winter Ascent. Many parties had attempted the winter ascent of Mercedario (6770 meters, 22,212 feet), fourth highest in the Americas, but all had had to retreat under extreme conditions. In June, Mauricio Fernández, Carlos Domíng...
Peak 5,772m, attempt. Our three-man team (Wojciech Chaladaj, Jakub Galka, and Marcin Kruczyk) hoped to attempt unclimbed Purian Sar North (6,247m) in July. However, the bag containing the majority of our climbing gear was lost at Heathrow Airport ...
Mount Bona and PI1,920. On May 30, Paul Claus of Ultima Thule Outfitters landed Ruedi Homberger and Stefan Wyss of Switzerland and myself at approximately 10,300 feet on the upper Hawkins Glacier under the immense south face of Mount Bona (16,421'...
Trisul, 23,360 ft., which for twenty years was the highest summit ever reached has just been climbed a second time, when on June 21st, 1933, P. O. Oliver and Kesar Sing effected its ascent. The first ascent was made on June 12th, 1907, by T. G. Lo...
AVALANCHE AND CLIMBING ALONE—Colorado, Mt. Ypsilon. At 8:43 a.m. on July 6, 1976, Christopher Sommer telephoned ROMO Dispatch to report an overdue friend, Jim Boicourt (29). Sommer believed Boicourt to be in the Ypsilon Lake area. A trailhead chec...
Tan Shan and Putala Shan, first ascents via difficult rock routes. My wife Tanja Grmovsek and I planned to visit the Qionglai Mountains in the spring of 2003 but due to the outbreak of the SARS virus just a few days before leaving for China we had...
Wyoming, Sherman Mountains—On October 16, Jim Burton (18), Floyd Young (18), Slyvan Brown (18), and Terry Richardson started to climb Piton Perch a rock climb of 200 vertical feet.Three of the climbers ascended Piton Perch and the fourth climber s...
FALL ON ICE, PLACED NO PROTECTIONAlberta, Rocky Mountains, Mt. DeltaformJock Richardson (19), Cam Cairns (19), and Mike Down (20) started at 0330 hours on 17 August 1977 to climb the first steep pitch on the north face glacier route on Mt. Deltafo...
Shivling and Bhagirathi III Attempts. Fabrizio Defrancesco, Stefano Nicolussi and I hoped to climb the Indo-Tibetan Border Police route on the west ridge of Shivling and the southwest buttress of Bhagirathi III. We got to Base Camp at the foot of ...
Mount Everest, West Ridge Attempt in Winter. Over the winter of 1980-81 Adrian and Alan Burgess, Brian Hall, Paul Nunn, Alan Rouse, Joe Tasker, Dr. Peter Thexton and I attempted the west ridge via the Lho La. We were accompanied by a three-man fil...
Tabernáculo, South Face, 1981. This peak at the center of the horseshoe of the Altar Range was ascended for the first time in 1972 by a German expedition, which used the northeast slopes. In the last days of 1981 two Ecuadorian groups placed a hig...
FALL ON SNOW, CLIMBING UNROPED, NO HARD HAT, INADEQUATE FOOTWEARColorado, Crestone NeedleOn September 11, 1982, Duane Best (22), a Western State College student, fell more than 80 meters to his death while ascending Crestone Needle with a companio...
VARIOUS FALLS ON ROCK (22 LEADER FALLS)–MOSTLY INADEQUATE PROTECTION, OFF ROUTE (2), RAPPEL ERROR, INADEQUATE BELAY New York, Mohonk Preserve, ShawangunksThere were 24 climbing related accidents reported from the Mohonk Preserve this year. The maj...
Kanjut Sar, West Face. Our expedition consisted of Masashi Tera- moto, Koichi Fujii, Masanobu Kaneko, Hiroshi Sakai, Nobuaki Miyano, Koji Shibuya, Tatsuhiko Kamachi, Dr. Michiro Kawano, Etsuo Masada and me as leader. We climbed the west face, wher...
New Hampshire, Mt. Lafayette. On 22 July Gregory Sherblow (17) and Stewart Putnam (17) were camped on top of Mt. Lafayette. A lightning storm developed and a bolt of lightning struck about 35 feet from their tent, smashed a boulder, and sent groun...