Mt. Reddomain, First Ascent. Not a few virgin 6000-meter peaks still remain in Sichuan, China. One photograph, taken by a Japanese trekker in 1998, attracted our interest. Reddomain (6112m) rises fifteen kilometers north of Mt. Gongka Shan. The fi...
FALL ON SNOW - SKI MOUNTAINEERINGAlaska, Mount McKinley, West ButtressOn June 28 at 1315, a climber (32) fell while skiing down from the fixed lines on the way to the 14,200-foot camp. National Park Service Ranger Dave Weber and a Volunteer-In-Par...
La Silla, El Bastardo. Stephan Siegrist, my brother Alexander, and I returned to Patagonia with the same ambitious target in mind: the traverse of the Cerro Torre massif. When we arrived in mid-January 2008 the Torres were completely covered in ic...
Denbor Brakk, west face, Against the Grain. During August I traveled to Pakistan with Damien and Elise Kelly, Jim Martinello, and Jason Sinnes, all from Whistler and Squamish, British Columbia. The party of four left me in the small Balti town of ...
Give Me the Hills, by Miriam Underhill. Riverside, Connecticut: The Chatham Press, Inc., in association with the Appalachian Mountain Club, 1971. 271 pages, 72 pages of photographs. First American Edition.This substantially enlarged edition of Mrs...
Sarychat Glacier, various ascents. On August 11 and 12 Martin Jones, Edward Lemon, Jacob Wrathall, and I, from King’s College London Alumni Mountaineering Club, achieved first ascents of five peaks on the western side of the Sarychat Glacier.We ar...
Étoiles et Tempêtes, by Gaston Rébuffat. 146 pages, 37 photographs, 6 sketches. Paris: B. Arthaud, 1954. Price, 850 Fr.“A guide loves difficulty, but detests danger. … Great dreams are better than souvenirs. … In climbing, one’s companion is as im...
1951-071959-0520082008USACAN.USACAN.TerrainRock445352877Snow233635531Ice267153River1431Unknown22100Ascent or DescentAscent299458782Descent227337129Unknown249131OtherN.B.700Immediate CauseFall or slip on rock352229067Slip on snow or ice101020713Fal...
Upper Fedchenko Glacier, possible first ascents and tragedy. Our expedition comprised eight current and former members of the University of Bristol Mountaineering Club. Four of us had climbed in Bolivia in 2003; for the others this was their first...
FALL ON ROCK, ARM LACERATED BY CARABINERNorth Carolina, Pilot Mountain State ParkOn September 25, Bennet Harris (30) and Tom Drewes (34) were climbing Arms Control (5.11c). Tom was about to pull the final roof. I was watching him climb extremely c...
José Luis Pereyra, bearded, wearing a coarse poncho, stands beside the Merced River. Equal parts prophetic shaman and mathematician, extreme athlete and major slacker, he pushes his bare feet into the granular beach, takes a breath, and begins to ...
STRANDED, HAIR CAUGHT IN RAPPEL DEVICE, EXCEEDING ABILITIES, ETC.Vermont, Smuggler’s NotchOn September 11, 1993, at 1400, Stowe Hazardous Terrain was dispatched to Smuggler's Notch to assist one or more reportedly injured rock climbers. Upon arriv...
Towuangseong Falls, Korean ice climbing overview. For climbers in the Seoul area, the usual place to practice rock-climbing is Insu Peak on Bukhan Mountain. No one is exactly sure when the sport of ice- climbing was introduced to Korea, but long-t...
No one knows what caused the death of Tomaz Humar on the south face of Langtang Lirung. On November 7 the 40-year-old Slovenian started up a wide couloir leading leftward and then diagonally up toward the south ridge. He bivouacked on the ridge at...
Washington, Olympics—Mt. Constance—On June 30, Robert T. Ives (27) and five other climbers were sitting on a ledge 10 feet directly below the summit of Mt. Constance waiting for climbers ahead of them while eating lunch. Visibility was poor with l...
PROTECTION PULLED, FALL ON ROCK, INADEQUATE PROTECTION, NO HARD HATCalifornia, Yosemite Valley, El CapitanWhile Biega was being rescued (see previous account), Kirk Bland (33), Luc Mailloux, and Kevin McCracken (23) were fixing pitches on Mescalit...
Chandra Bhaga Group: Daund (5,565m); Hora East (ca 5,250m); Pagoda East East (ca 5,750m), east ridge; Tara Pahar (6,227m), east ridge attempt. Our six-member expedition from Greece originally wanted to attempt unclimbed CB33a. This would involve a...
The Bowmaiden, Lucky Sailor’s Route. This formation rises above the headwaters of the south fork of Cathedral Creek, and is the most impressive of several north faces on the ridge between Mount Hoffman and Tuolumne Peak. Its summit is 10,560+ feet...
FROSTBITE, WEATHERAlaska, Mount McKinley, West ButtressOn May 31, a guided group of five clients led by Blaine Smith and Willy Peabody of Alaska Denali Guiding, was forced to spend the night out in a storm at 19,000 feet onMount McKinley. Due to t...
Kedarnath. A 9-member team from Switzerland led by Christophe Peretti failed to climb Kedarnath (6940 meters, 22,770 feet) at the end of July. They were stopped at 6300 meters by soft snow and rain.Kamal K. Guha, Editor, Himavanta, India