This essay accompanied the AAJ's In Memoriam tribute to Tom Hornbein, who died on May 6, 2023. Here’s what one most often hears about Tom Hornbein’s book Everest: The West Ridge: (1) I read it when I was young, (2) it got me into climbing, (3) ...
The following climbers who passed away in 2023 wrote many reports and articles for the American Alpine Journal over the years. Here, we offer brief tributes to these friends and contributors. DMITRY GOLOVCHENKO from Russia wrote eight articles f...
Losing Aimee Barnes after a long chase by cancer has left a gaping hole in the vast fabric of her friends and family. It’s a hole that can’t be darned or patched, so we do our best by decorating around the edges and calling into the void to see if...
In late August and early September 2022, a team from the International School of Mountaineering, with a total of four guides and nine climbers, ascended numerous peaks in the northwest end of the Fergana Range. The team arrived at base camp (3,250...
Reaching the summit of the Grand Teton, the fifth peak of the Enduro Traverse, looking south over Middle Teton, South Teton, Mt. Wister, and Buck Mountain (extending along the crest above and left of the climber). Photo by Michael Gardner. Tr...
Alex Rienzie gazes at the Grand Teton from Middle Teton to the south, with the Ford Couloir dropping straight below the Grand’s summit. The photo was taken during a Teton Trifecta, linking ski descents of the Grand, Middle, and South Tetons. Pho...
Tasio Martin Elorrieta on the 14th pitch (6c+) of Txoria Txori on Punta Guillem Aparicio. Photo by Marc Torrales. In August 2022, a team of friends traveled to the Shafat Valley, where several of us opened new rock routes. Marc Toralles and ...
Nevado Veronica (5,911m) from the east, showing: (blue line) the 2021 route along the east side to join the northeast ridge, and (red line) the 2023 direct east face route. Photo by Nate Heald. In September 2021, I climbed a route on the east...
In early June, Peruvians Bruno López and Rodrigo Mendoza made the second ascent of the west face of Nevado Tinki (a.k.a. Tinke, 5,450m), southeast of Cusco, with significant variations to the line opened by Luke Bird and Pete Takeda in 2022. The...
Chaupi Orco Norte (ca 6,000m), with the west ridge along the right skyline. The climb began with a steep ascent of the icefall at far right. Photo by Nate Heald. In November, Canadians Samuel Gagnon and Valery Bilodeau, Samuel Crispin (Peru),...
In 2015, Juan Gabriel Estellano, Lilen Sosa, and I climbed a five-pitch route (see AAJ 2016) on high-quality granite on the west side of the ridge extending northeast from the summit of Jati Khollu (5,421m). Over the next eight years, Juan Gabri...
On April 17, Erik Olerud and I skied virtually the entire northwest ridge of Nevado Sajama (6,542m), Bolivia’s tallest peak. We descended approximately 1,000m on skis from the summit to about 5,450m (250m below our high camp). We had to remove s...
More: Life on the Edge of Adventure and Motherhood, by Majka Burhardt (Pegasus Books, $27.95). Burhardt follows up on her two Ethiopia books with an epistolary memoir exploring the pursuit of risk in the face of responsibility for new children (tw...
During July 2024, our team of five Spaniards—Miguel A. Díaz, Alex Gonzalez, Indi Gutierrez, Jaume Peiró, and me, Manu Ponce—traveled to Angola in search of new big walls. Having many options to explore, in the end we decided to start in the Conda ...
A FINE LINE: SEARCHING FOR BALANCE AMONG MOUNTAINS By Graham Zimmerman (Mountaineers Books, 2023). Paperback, 224 pages, $19.95. Seventy pages into Graham Zimmerman’s memoir A Fine Line, the author and his partners, who are forging a new route in...
CLOSER TO THE EDGE: CLIMBING TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH By Leo Houlding (Headline Press, U.K., 2023). Paperback, 368 pages, £12.99. A friend and frequent climbing partner has complained to me about the narrowness of climbing literature: “I tried to...
THE ZEN OF CLIMBING By Francis Sanzaro (Saraband, 2023). Paperback, 216 pages, $14.95. Near the middle of The Zen of Climbing, Francis Sanzaro offers a succinct and gripping account of finding himself perched precariously on a ledge and staring d...
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...