On June 4 and 5, Michael Gardner and I made the second ascent of Light Traveler (M7), on the southwest face of Denali. [Editor’s note: Light Traveler takes a direct line up the southwest face,between the Denali Diamond and the Cassin Ridge.] Marko...
GOOD CONDITIONS PREVAILED throughout 2018 in the Chugach Mountains around Valdez and Thompson Pass. Living and working year-round in Valdez, I was able to climb five probable first ascents with numerous partners.Through the end of February we had ...
AFTER WATCHING a constant barrage of storms strafe south-central Alaska in the late spring of 2018, Mat Brunton and I headed into the Wrangell Mountains hoping to visit a semi-protected area of storm shadow on the drier side of the range. On May 1...
IN LATE JULY, Lang Van Dommelen, Chris Williams, and I flew into Gates of the Arctic National Park looking for adventure, suffering, and ecstasy on the walls of the Arrigetch Peaks. They did not disappoint. Coyote Air dropped us off on a gravel ba...
Sasha DiGiulian, accompanied by Molly Mitchell (both USA), onsighted Samadhi (450m, 5.13a) in February 2019 for the third known free ascent. The pair spent 14 hours on the route, which is sustained at 5.12 or harder on the top five pitches. Samadh...
IN 1971, THE YOUNG AND STRONG team of Jeff Lowe and Mike Weis walked up to the base of “Chimney Tower” and climbed what became the famous Moonlight Buttress. Forty years later, Jeff was crippled by a disease that rendered him incapable of talking ...
In 2016, Joe Crane and I ventured into Idaho’s Lost River Range to pit ourselves against the unrepeated Broken Wings (400m, WI5, Dickerson-Lords-Mordicai, AAJ 2006) on the north face of Sacajewea Peak (11,936’). Due to the fickle nature of mixed c...
From May 4–7, Matt Meinzer and I established a new free climb on the southwest face of Notch Peak in the House Range of Utah’s West Desert area. The Southwest Face Left (400m, IV 5.11 R) proved to be a serious and slightly loose affair. We placed ...
In April, Kristoffer Wickstrom and I established Ephemeron (VI 5.10 A4), a 22-pitch line up the center of El Capitan, with roughly two-thirds independent terrain. Kristoffer and I spent one day fixing pitches and nine days committed to the wall to...
SOMETIME IN THE SUMMER OF 2017, Kyle Willis told me about his idea to do a technical circumnavigation of Boston Basin in the North Cascades. That August, we packed for a couple of days and prepared for a lot of scrambling. We approached up the Sah...
On March 31, Mark Bunker and I climbed a previously undocumented line on the northwest face of Snoqualmie Mountain (6,278’) that we called the Turf Testament. We did not see evidence of past ascents but would not be surprised to learn the route ha...
IN THE FALL of 2017, I climbed Woman of Mountain Dreams (V 5.11) on Mt. Wilson with my friend Lindsey Hamm. The first few pitches of that route follow a corner system to the top of a formation called Aeolian Tower. From this vantage, I spied a spl...
Wayne Wallace had mentioned that there was some unclimbed potential on the left side of the Black Spider, a concave rock wall that spans the last thousand vertical feet of Mt. Hood’s northeast aspect, left of the classic Cooper Spur route. A quick...
In late October, Justin Willis and I headed into Glacier National Park to explore the area’s potential for fall alpine mixed climbing. During a warm and clear weather window, we made what we think is the second ascent and first "wintery" ascent of...
WE DEPARTED LEE'S FERRY on November 24, 2017, seven people in two boats. This would be my fifth trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon. It had been seven years since my last, and though I had rafted little in the meantime, my old friend...
JUST OFF the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway in northwest Wyoming is a section of the Clarks Fork Canyon of the Yellowstone River called the Box, which as far as I know was named by white-water boaters. In the Box is a 1,000’, south-facing granite wal...
Inspired by Florian Tolle’s report in AAJ 2008, Ruud Rotte, Danny Schoch, Menno Schokker, and I left the Netherlands on June 3 for the Dasbar Valley in far northwest Pakistan. We were possibly the first climbers to visit since Tolle’s French team ...
In July and early August, Dawid Sysak and I were in the Nalumasortoq-Ulamertorsuaq region, where we climbed a new route and made a first free ascent. After this, our last spell of good weather allowed us to make a free ascent of the area's classic...
Building on the successes of my earlier expeditions to the region (AAJs 2008, 2015, and 2016), Ingrid Baber (Germany), Sandy Gregson, Ron Kenyon, Simon Richardson, Mark Robson, and I (all U.K.) visited the Neild Bugt area from mid-April to mid-May...
Alik Berg and I left Calgary on June 30. On July 14, after many flights, jeep drives, and three days of trekking with porters, we arrived at our 4,500m base camp on the Yutmaru Glacier. As often happens on expeditions, neither the final team nor t...