In 2017, Canada’s 150th anniversary, I tried to reach the summit of Mt. Logan via the King Trench with a partner. We were able to reach the summit plateau but had to turn back because my partner was no longer able to continue the climb. I was disa...
Jonathan Wakefield and Glenn Wilks (U.K.) flew onto the unnamed glacier that flows toward the Logan Glacier from Mt. Upton, directly north of Mt. Logan, with the aim of ascending unclimbed peaks around the inner glacier. We first tried to access t...
BROOKS RANGE Aviation delivered Drew Lovell, Forest McBrian, David Moskowitz, and me to Circle Lake on a warm and sunny afternoon on July 22. Over two days we walked into the valley called Aiyagomahala—the “Gentle Giant” in the creation myth of th...
In December 2017, Pete Fasoldt (USA) established and freed La Garganta (6 pitches, 5.12+), up-canyon from La Boca. Fasoldt climbed the route ground-up and solo, in about a week of effort, and then freed the climb in one day, belayed by Sara Violet...
THE SHEILA FACE of Aoraki/Mt. Cook—the northwest face—sits at the head of the Hooker Glacier. Continuously steep and nearly 1,000m high at full height, it presents some of the most inspiring technical terrain in the Southern Alps. Helicopter acces...
Looking up the Atoroma Valley with Atoroma’s southwest face on the right and the rocky south and southeast faces of Yaypuri in center. Visible portions of the 2018 routes are marked; other routes not shown. Photo by Aaron ZimmermanMy wife, Jeanne,...
Nelson Neirinck (Belgium), Jess Roskelley, and I (both USA) spent 25 days exploring the Lachit Valley, from July 22 to August 15. The Lachit is a subvalley of the greater Kondus Valley, a region thatuntil recently has been closed to non-military a...
AFTER REPEATING Alexander Huber's 2012 route Nirwana (multipitch 8c+) in Austria, I met him in 2016 at one of his lectures to talk about the climb. It soon became clear that we got on well together. We went to South Africa for our first shared adv...
Looking south up the Nying Glacier to the mountains of Nyalu Lek. (A) Nying Himal (6,140m). (B) A broad summit of around 5,700m. (C) Unnamed peak attempted in 2018 to within 40m of summit. (D) Small tooth climbed in 2018 by French party. (E) Shikh...
Success often leads us to ignore many potential problems. Failures amplify our mistakes. — Li Zongli In 2016, Li Zongli and Xiao Hai (China) attempted the north spur and northeast ridge of Minya Konka (a.k.a. Gongga Shan, 7,556m). Their plann...
WHILE ACCLIMATIZING for another objective in the Genyen Massif, Zhang Qingwei, Huang Siyuan, and I saw the pyramid peak of Hutsa (29°54'2.96"N, 99°37'24.03"E). We knew its name and altitude (5,863m) but nothing else. This now became our major goal...
Sometime between the evening of October 10 and the following day, five Korean climbers and four Nepalese staff were killed at their 3,800m base camp below the south face of Gurja Himal (7,193m). This included the team leader, one of the world’s mo...
MANAGING TERRAIN with a low probability but high consequence of falling—typically described as third-class, fourth-class, and low fifth-class climbing—is a multi-faceted affair, affected by skill sets, route and time pressures, and human factors (...
ONE OF THE MOST COMMON injuries for climbers during a fall is a sprain or break of the lower leg. An easy morning hike to the crag can turn into an evening epic if a partner has injured a leg. The following techniques may allow a small team to eva...
On July 16, Felix Berg (German) and Adam Bielecki (Poland) climbed a partial new route on Gasherbrum II (8,034m). The pair followed the normal route up the southwest ridge to about7,300m, the point where it begins to veer right and traverse below ...
Jonathan Schaffer and I climbed a new route on the left side of the southeast face of Hainabrakk East Tower. We climbed ground-up, used no bolts or pins, and made two bivouacs: Heinous Broccoli Robbery (1,100m, 5.11+ A1).We also climbed Eternal Fl...
On July 7 I reached the summit of Lupghar Sar West (7,157m) via the previously untouched west face. (This peak was first climbed in 1979 via the southwest ridge.) Completely on my own, and after making some good acclimatization loops around base c...
Climbing in alpine style, Czech climbers Marek Holeček and Tomáš Petreček planned to attempt a new route on the Rupal Face to the right of the 2005 Anderson-House route on the Central Pillar. Bad weather and snowfall made this impractical, and whe...
Argentine climbers Lucas Alzamora, Carloncho Guerra, and Diego Nakamura visited northern Mozambique during September, inspired by photos of the granite domes there. Northern Mozambique has many rock walls, some up to 700m high, however the local c...
In early 2016 a friend and mountain guide from South Africa, Neil Margetts, sent me a photograph taken from a small plane of the northwest wall of Great Spitzkoppe. He had seen the photo on a friend’s Facebook page, and he was quick to spot the cl...