THE LIFER: ROCK CLIMBING ADVENTURES IN THE GUNKS AND BEYOND By Russ Clune (Di Angelo Publications, 2023). Paperback, 274 pages, $25. Many of us dream of dropping everything and heading to the crags to climb full-time. Few of us ultimately do. Ru...
TOM PATEY: ONE MAN'S LEGACY By Mike Dixon (Scottish Mountaineering Press, 2022). Hardcover, 464 pages, £30. In the mid-1970s, when I was new to climbing, none of my circle was buying hardcover books. Yet all of us knew the anecdote about Royal...
ROYAL ROBBINS: THE AMERICAN CLIMBER By David Smart. Foreword by John Long. (Mountaineers Books, 2023.) Paperback, 256 pages, $22.95. David Smart has done it again. His succession of biographies began with a memoir, followed by thorough treatmen...
On July 8, Jedrzej Jablonski (Poland) and Christian Junkar (USA) climbed a route up the southwest face of Aguja Nevada I (5,840m), reaching the plateau below the summit. The climbing began at 5,100m and consisted of 12 pitches of ice, mixed, and s...
Latok Thumb is a 6,380m rock tower with a precipitous southwest face. Its northeast flank drops to a high col on the south-southwest ridge of Latok II; the upper section of this ridge, approached via the southeast spur, was climbed by an Italian t...
Previously unreported is the possible first ascent of Honbrok (Honboro, 6,459m) on July 16, 2000, by Satoshi Hatsugai, Mori Hatsuyoshi, and Kumiko Suzuki from Japan. Prior to reaching Hushe, the three had acclimatized on the Deosai Plateau, a high...
In 2021, Takayasu Semba and Shinji Tamura attempted Bondit Peak via the northeast spur, retreating from 5,400m due to high avalanche danger (AAJ 2022). They returned to the same line in 2022, and this time almost reached the summit; later that sam...
In August, Dmitry Golovchenko and Sergey Nilov attempted the unclimbed southeast ridge of Gasherbrum IV (7,925m) in alpine style. Their plan was to descend the original route on the northeast ridge, climbed in 1958 by Walter Bonatti and Carlo Maur...
Skiing and snowboarding toward the base of the couloir north of Nuating III. The formation opposite lies at the end of the long east ridge of Biarchedi VI. Photo by Mueez Ud Din. In the latter half of May, Sam Favret and Julien Herry (France)...
On August 15, Antonin Borovka, Lukas Kroker, Jaroslav Musil, Josef Smrtka, and I, all Czech, arrived at the village of Patkhor. We set off for the Shteklozar Glacier, which is hard to reach, as in the upper parts of valley there is no path and one...
British alpinists Mick Fowler and Simon Yates attempted the northeast spur of Patkhor (6,083m), the highest peak in the Rushan Range, in mid-July. This unclimbed line had been the aim of Pete Dronkers and Spencer Gray (USA) in August 2017; they re...
An exceptionally heavy monsoon washed away many of the roads and bridges leading to the Kullu-Spiti area, where Takaaki Furuhata, Toshihiro Ueda, and Yasushi Yamanoi had hoped to make a first ascent on one of the Dibibokri peaks. A quick change of...
Stefan Plank climbing the first pitch (VII+) on the northeast face of Shawa Kangri. Photo by Hannes Niederwolfsgruber. As with the other members of our expedition from South Tyrol (see reports here and here), heavy snowfall immediately after ...
Beginning the final push on the northwest face of Little Jamyang Ri. Photo by Stefan Plank. Our arrival at base camp in the Rangtik Tokpo was followed by three days of heavy snowfall. When this cleared, an obvious choice was the northwest fac...
View to the north from Alpomish to Peak 4,643m (sometimes mistakenly called Khazret Sultan), in the center of the photo. Long thought to be the highest peak in Uzbekistan, Peak 4,643m was conclusively shown to be lower than Alpomish during ascen...
Readers of certain sections of the AAJ may notice references to the “Wala maps” and to the numbered peaks labeled on those maps. Polish mountaineer Jerzy Wala created maps from the Karakoram, Hindu Kush, and other ranges over many decades. Even in...
Looking west-southwest to Mt. Andrew, above the Dall Glacier. The first ascent on April 20, 2024, generally followed the north ridge, the long ridgeline diagonaling up to the summit from right to left. The mountain to the right is Peak 8,900’+ (...
In late August and September, a team of four from the U.K. (Clement Attwood, Thomas Walker, Calum Wesencraft, and Nick Whimster) aimed to establish new routes above the Kyzyl Asker Glacier. After acclimatization and several days of effort, an adva...
On May 19, 2022, the mostly French team of Thomas Delfino, Jean-Yves Fredricksen, Léa Klaue (Switzerland), Aurélien Lardy, and Hélias Millerioux skied and snowboarded the north face of Nochnoi Motyl (“Night Butterfly,” 5,056m), the central peak...
In the summer of 2023, our team from Latvia climbed two summits in the Mindzhar Valley near the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border, which I had previously visited twice (see AAJs 2017 and 2018). Nauris Hofmanis, Raivis Hofmanis, Edgars Madzulis, Inese ...