Rappelling the second pitch of the route King Slut (5.11) in the Organ Mountains is an absolute nightmare. In November, I (male, 34) was rappelling on a single 70-meter, 7.8mm half rope with a second rope on my back. Before I began navigating down...
On April 7, seven avalanches occurred in Tuckerman Ravine. All were human triggered. At least five people were caught in one of the avalanches.In the week leading up to April 7, there were two rain events. The first was March 29–30, delivering 0.7...
On February 25, after climbing two-thirds of the way up Hillman’s Highway and not finding a ton of good snow, our group transitioned for an icy ski descent. There was a small ribbon of wind slab on the skiers’ right side of the slide. My two partn...
At about 1 p.m. on February 24, a climber took a long sliding fall while ascending near the top of Right Gully in Tuckerman Ravine. The subject slipped on very hard, icy snow and was unable to self-arrest with an ice axe. The resulting high-speed ...
On February 23, a local climbing guide, age 64, took his client to Mt. Willard, a popular area for moderate, multi-pitch ice climbs. The weather was warm, and by early afternoon freezing rain was falling. At around 1 p.m., the guide short-roped hi...
At 2 p.m. on March 28, Parker Kempf (28) dislodged a large sandstone flake (approximately three cubic feet in size) at the overhanging start of Is It Soup Yet (5.10b) in the Moderate Mecca area. This resulted in a ground fall of roughly six feet, ...
On August 2, a 13-year-old girl was climbing with a camp group at Robinson Park in Sandstone, about an hour and a half north of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, when she got her knee stuck in a wide crack 40 feet above the ground. Climbers in her group wer...
On June 10, Jason Harbin (47) and I (45) climbed the Keeper (5.9), a relatively new (2017) sport route at Camelot. We stick-clipped the high first bolt and I led the route with no issues. Jason (12 years of climbing experience) opted to clean the ...
On April 27, Seamus Hehir (26) fell approximately 50 feet after incorrectly setting up a rappel to clean the route Suppress the Rage (5.12a) at Sunnyside wall. According to his belayer, Jake McCrary (32), Seamus hit a boulder at the base of the cl...
Hao Yan, 23, had come to Idaho from the East Coast to fight forest fires, and in June he decided to attempt 12,662-foot Borah Peak. Climbing solo, he started before dawn but got lost on the approach, and by the time he reached the main difficultie...
On November 10, in very cold temperatures, Sam Warren (20) and his partner were rock climbing at Main Cliff on Ragged Mountain. Sam, a 5.10 sport climber and beginner trad climber, was attempting to lead Tower Crack (5.7), an offwidth crack in an ...
On October 20, Alex Kissinger (28) and I (27) started up the Yellow Spur (six pitches, 5.9+). At around 4 p.m. we reached the top of the fourth pitch, where the belay stance is a small, exposed ledge no bigger than a small nightstand table. There ...
IT'S EARLY SEASON on El Cap. A climber looks up to see his partner peel off the rock and fly past him. When the climber rappels down, his fallen partner is barely responsive. Yosemite Search and Rescue arrives soon and evacuates the fallen climber...
On both August 18 and October 3, the Alpine Rescue Team responded to the east end of the Creekside wall to assist stranded climbers. The climbers had started up the neighboring multi-pitch sport routes Playin’ Hooky (5.8) and Black Gold (5.7), and...
On April 28, three buddies and I set out to climb Playin’ Hooky, a three- or four-pitch bolted 5.8. By the time we made it to the crag, there were two other parties waiting to get on the same route. We checked the book and decided to get on the ro...
I try to climb a first ascent on my birthday, October 20, every year, and this time my friends Vitaliy and Adam and I had selected the south face of Windy Cliff. It lies on the north side of the South Fork of the Kings River, just outside of Kings...
On October 20, at approximately 2 p.m., an experienced climber (male, 36) took a long, tumbling ground fall on Vanadium Miner’s Daughter (5.9) at the Gateway Slabs, outside of Pratt’s Crack Canyon. This single-pitch climb on a low-angle slab was t...
At approximately 4:30 p.m. on August 26, two climbers were descending loose 4th-class terrain in the North Couloir of Thunderbolt Peak when a male climber (31) took a tumbling fall of approximately 300 feet, suffering major trauma. This climber ha...
On July 29, after climbing North Peak, Kimberly Luba and I descended to the basin below Mt. Conness. While resting by a small alpine lake, we heard cries for help. We headed up the talus field under the north ridge of Conness, following the scream...
On the morning of June 10, Inyo County Search and Rescue was notified of an accident involving three climbers above Trail Camp on Mt. Whitney. At approximately 7 a.m., climber 1 (female, age unknown) slipped while ascending “The Chute,” a snowfiel...