On October 23, Miha Zupin and I left Slovenia for the Rolwaling, and on the 28th reached the village of Na (4,150m), our base camp for the next three weeks. At the start of our stay there was afternoon snow, but other than that we had beautiful co...
In September, Hiroyoshi Manome, Makoto Kuroda, and Yukio Ueda from Japan left Tos (Tosh) village in the Kullu Valley and walked up the Tos Nala to establish a base camp on the west side of the Tos Glacier at about 4,250m (32° 9'56.28"N, 77°29'22.2...
A nine-member expedition led by Rudra Prasad Halder, with a three-man Sherpa support team, planned to attempt an unnamed and unclimbed peak of 6,113m (dubbed Goutam Parbat, 32°34'43"N, 76°42'43"E) in the Ghar Nala, south of Thirot in the Chandrabh...
In August 2017, having climbed several new routes in the Miyar Valley in the autumn of 2015, Muriel Zucchini and I returned to the Miyar, this time with three young climbers from Nice, Thomas Auvaro, Florence Cotto, and Antoine Rolle. We were a re...
WHEN OUR SIX-MEMBER TEAM set out from Rongdo, a quaint village in Ladakh, we had little idea of our final destination. Our plan was to start trekking at the southernmost village in the Nubra Valley and work our way as far north as possible along t...
After five trips with four partners over two seasons, I completed the second ascent and first free ascent of Mt. Slesse’s east face, climbing with Jacob Cook (U.K.), via a six-pitch variation to the original route (1997, Easton-Edgar, ED2 VI 5.9 A...
Local guide Mark Klassen spearheaded the first ascent of the south ridge of Mt. Hector (3,394m), above the east side of the Icefields Parkway. Klassen noticed the stepped ridgeline while working at nearby Lake Louise ski area in the late 1980s, an...
The Leaning Towers are a small group of granitic peaks in the heart of the Purcell Wilderness Conservatory in southeastern British Columbia. Over the course of 10 days in August, Ian Dusome and I aimed to climb the east face of the Pulpit, a subpe...
On May 7, Brette Harrington and Marc-André Leclerc climbed the north face of Lady Peak (2,178m) in the Cheam Range, near Chilliwack. This was likely the first ascent of the face, whose steepest section gains about 500m and is comprised of loose bu...
At the end of August, Nick Elson and Julian Stoddart (Canada) did a one-day car-to-car traverse of the Slesse Mountain group, from south to north, completing a linkup that may first have been attempted by Coast Mountains legend Don Serl and Rob Nu...
The Slesse group from the east, showing (A) Labour Day Horn, (B) Station D, (C) South Peak, and (D) Slesse Mountain. (1) Approximate line of Navigator Wall. (2) Approximate line of 2017 free variation to the east face of Slesse. Photo by Steph Abe...
It was May 22, my fourth day living on the outskirts of Zion National Park. I had moved there for a summer job and was taking every opportunity to climb. That evening, my climbing partner and I took the park shuttle to Cerberus Wall. My partner ju...
In 2011 Denis Burdet, Robert Frost, David Lama, and Stephan Siegrist climbed Yoniverse on the northwest face and upper south ridge of Cerro Kishtwar (6,155m GPS) to make the second ascent of the mountain. During his time on the climb, Siegrist’s e...
During the post-monsoon season there were a number of attempts on Kyungka Ri I (6,599m), an officially unclimbed peak close to the Tibetan border, northeast of Shalbachum, and at least one successful ascent. First to arrive was a large expediti...
While reaching the summit of Manaslu, Esteban Mena caught a glimpse of Larkya Peak (6,416m) and later had no trouble convincing Roberto Morales and Nico Navarrete to join him for an attempt on the big rock wall of the southeast face. A few months ...
Larkya Peak (6,416m) lies on the ridge north of Manaslu North and is visible from the northeast along the classic Manaslu Circuit trek. From the south, many climbers ascending Manaslu’s normal route have a clear view of Larkya Peak’s impressive gr...
Leon Hiro Davis, Andres Marin, and I had planned on climbing Panbari (6,905m) for quite some time. It had been on my radar ever since the first ascent a decade earlier (AAJ 2007). A photo of the jutting south ridge was simply too much to resist—it...
In the autumn of 2016, a German Alpine Club (DAV) expedition under the leadership of Herbert Bader made the first ascent of Takphu North (6,142m, 30°18’8.03”N, 81°24’59.96”E), a peak on the border with Tibet, near the northwest tip of Nepal. (Peak...
A MOUNTAINEER’S LIFE. Allen Steck. Patagonia, 2017. 255 pages. Hardcover, 255 pages, $35.Readers of this treasure of an American memoir, packed with fascinating color photographs, have to wait until page 58 to see a picture of the author himself (...
THE ART OF FREEDOM: THE LIFE AND CLIMBS OF VOYTEK KURTYKA. Bernadette McDonald. Rocky Mountain Books, 2017. Hard- cover, 256 pages, $32 (CDN).I can’t stand it. Reviewing another dumb climber/hero worship story about rising above oneself in search ...