P 3129, Northeast Buttress. On November 7, Chris Breemer and I arrived at the base of Mount Morrison to find its north face out of condition, or at least out of condition for us. Rather than to go home without accomplishing anything on such a warm...

Khwaja Muhammad Range. Yasu Takeuchi led nine members of the High School Athletic Association of Fukuoka. Leaving Kabul on July 8, they entered the mountains via Anjuman village and established Base Camp on the 17th. The highest peaks climbed were...

Mather, North Ridge. In three short days, Jeff Apple Benowitz and I reached the bottom of the climb from the Denali Park Road via Glacier Creek. The lower part of the ridge has impossibly rotten rock. We avoided this by climbing a 2000-foot couloi...

Latok III, west face, attempt and tragedy. A strong Russian team met with tragedy during their attempt on the unclimbed 2,000-meter-high West Face of Latok III (6949m). Igor Barikhin, Mikhail Davy, Sergey Khadzhinov, Alexander Klenov, Alexander Ru...

Parchamo, Rolwaling Himal. A group of 12 Swedish Mountaineers visited the Rolwaling Himal in October and early November. Four of us spent two very cold nights on the Teshi Lapcha Pass, from which my wife Lena Karlkvist made a solo (!) ascent of Pa...

Wyoming, Grand Teton National Park, near summit of the Grand Teton— On August 21, at about 10:10 A.M., Joseph W. Keubler (20), was fatally injured in a climbing accident near the summit of the Grand Teton. He was leading the climbing party and was...

ROPE FAILURE—California, Yosemite Valley. At 5 p.m. on October 5, 1976, Ranger Rick Smith received a phone call from Mirror Lake. Chris Falkenstein reported that his climbing partner, Robert Locke (22), had sustained serious injuries during a 200-...

Xao Xuebao Ding, 1991. On page 270 of AAJ, 1992, we reported on the first ascent of Xuebao Ding in Sichuan but failed to record the ascent by another Japanese expedition of Xao Xuebao Ding (5540 meters, 18,176 feet), which lies just to the southea...

Mount Formidable, Winter Ascent. On January 3 and 4, my brother Gordy and I climbed Mount Formidable by its north ridge. Except for some washouts on the road and trail, the approach up the Middle Cascade River differed little from summer. From an ...

Chandra Parbat I. Our Australian team of eight made the first ascent of Chandra Parbat I (6739 meters, 22,110 feet), which lies on the eastern bank of the Suralaya Glacier. There seems to be confusion over our peak’s name (P 6739 or Chandra Parbat...

Guide du Skieur dans les Alpes Valaisannes, by Marcel Kurz. 2 vols. (I, du Col de Balme au Col Collon; II, du Col Collon au Monte Moro.) 2nd edition. Club Alpin Suisse, 1939.Marcel Kurz’s ski guide to the Valais covers the finest country in the Al...

Fitz Roy, Various Ascents. Only two teams made it up Fitz Roy in the 1995-1996 season, despite attempts by at least two dozen expeditions to the area. The first team successful on the mountain was a five-man French group made up of members of the ...

Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills, 7th edition. Steven M. Cox, Kris Fulsaas, editors; chapters by members of The Mountaineers. Seattle: The Mountaineers Books, 2003. 575 pages. Hardcover, $37.95; paperback, $26.95.I took the Seattle Mountai...

Adventure Guide to Mount Rainier: Hiking, Climbing and Skiing in Mount Rainier National Park. Jeff Smoot. Chockstone Press, Evergreen, Colorado 80439, 1991. 172 pages. 38 photos, 54 line maps, 27 oblique-perspective (and profile) peak sketches. $1...

For three months I traveled alone in Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan, near the Tibet border, spending time with local inhabitants and exploring unclimbed mountains and little visited valleys. Shaluli Shan I first visited Shaluli Shan ...

Nanga Parbat in RetrospectFritz WiessnerTHE partial failure of the Nanga Parbat Expedition, which had started with such high hopes, raises the question as to what were the causes that prevented the party from reaching the summit, and what are the ...

Rims Recreation Area, Various Ascents. Thirty miles south of Moab (via U.S. 191) is the BLM’s Rims Recreation Area, a high mesa bordered by Indian Creek (south) and the Colorado River (west). Hatch Wash slices through the mesa, exposing high-quali...

Xiashe (5,833m), first ascent. On October 13 Patricia Deavoll of New Zealand and I made the first ascent of Xiashe, via the south face and southwest ridge. We arrived in the region on October 1 accompanied by an interpreter, Zhengling Cheng (Lenny...

July 31, 6,900 meters. I’m in the murky space of a deep dream, in which I’m standing in a wooden boat, seized by the swift current of a river and speeding headlong toward the horizon. Somewhere far away, along the shore, a small boy is running, wa...

Beforehand, there was a feeling of fear, fear that I could make a mistake. If a hold broke, if I fell backward into the tremendous space, what would I think about? Would I be angry? What would happen when my body smashed onto the talus? Would I ...