In August 2017, Marcos Dias, Pedro Salomão, Wayler Muiños, and I opened the route Segundo Sol (450m, 5.11a) on the west face of Pedra da Gávea (842m), a huge mountain in the city of Rio de Janeiro. This is one of the largest coastline monoliths in...
Volcán Nevado del Huila (5,364m; 2°55'25"N, 76°1'41"W) is the highest volcano in Colombia. However, ongoing volcanic activity and sociopolitical conflict has limited access. In 2019, we attempted to reach the volcano via the town of Gigante to the...
In late May 2020, I met Sam England on the west side of Notch Peak in the West Desert. (I had spent the first day of this trip hiking in gear and scouting route options as Sam finished the last leg of his drive.) Soon enough, we were at the base o...
There and Back: Photographs from the Edge (Ten Speed Press, $50) collects a “best of ” compilation of climber Jimmy Chin’s (of Meru and Free Solo fame) spectacular photographs. Patrick Dean’s Window to Heaven: The Daring First Ascent of Denali, Am...
THE THIRD POLE: MYSTERY, OBSESSION, AND DEATH ON MOUNT EVEREST. Mark Synnott. Dutton, 2021. Hardback, 416 pages. $29. Any armchair mountaineer knows that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay are credited with the first ascent of Everest on May 2...
TO BE A WARRIOR: THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE AND MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF BILLY DAVIDSON. Brandon Pullan. Rocky Mountain Books (Canada), 2021. Paperback, 248 pages, $28 (CAN). In the year 2000, the young author Brandon Pullan is on his first trip to the Cana...
THE MOUNTAIN PATH: A CLIMBER’S JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE AND DEATH. Paul Pritchard. Vertebrate Publishing (U.K.), 2021. Hardcover, 192 pages, £24. British climber Paul Pritchard’s 1998 fall on Tasmania’s Totem Pole is one of the most famous accidents ...
DAMMED IF YOU DON’T. Chris Kalman, with illustrations by Craig Muderlak. Privately published, 2021. Hardcover, 170 pages, $24.99. An idyllic, hidden valley. A horde of climbers comes to despoil it. A misguided attempt to preserve the land, whatev...
IMAGINARY PEAKS: THE RIESENSTEIN HOAX AND OTHER MOUNTAIN DREAMS. Katie Ives. Mountaineers Books, 2021. Hardcover, 304 pages, $26.95. The Riesensteins were an invented mountain range, purported to be in British Columbia, that appeared in Summit ma...
MOUNTAINS AND DESIRE: CLIMBING VS. THE END OF THE WORLD. Margret Grebowicz. Repeater Books, 2021. Paperback, 113 pages, $14.95. Mountains and Desire is enigmatically subtitled Climbing vs. the End of the World. A more accurate subtitle might be R...
HIGHER LOVE: CLIMBING AND SKIING THE SEVEN SUMMITS. Kit DesLauriers. Mountaineers Books, 2021. Paperback, 288 pages, $19.95. Every once in a while, someone attempts a feat so ambitious, it seems nearly impossible. We can’t wrap our heads around i...
THE NEXT EVEREST: SURVIVING THE MOUNTAIN’S DEADLIEST DAY AND FINDING THE RESILIENCE TO CLIMB AGAIN. Jim Davidson. St. Martins’ Press, 2021. Hardcover, 409 pages, $29.99. Imagine yourself nine hours into your first acclimatization rotation on Ever...
From September 14–16, Kirill Belotserkovskiy completed the first known traverse of the rugged crest of the Tuyuk-Su cirque, 25km southeast of Kazakhstan’s ex-capital, Almaty. As a guide in the area, Belotserkovskiy has climbed all of this group’s ...
Gerber Cucurell and Jordi Esteve, who’ve made repeated visits to Lofoten from Catalonia, climbed two new routes on Moskenesøya island in May. First up, on May 25, was a new line on the west face of Helvetestinden (602m), overlooking Bunes Beach. ...
In the spring of 2020, legendary climber and conservationist George Whitmore, 89, texted a friend about November 12, 1958, the day he and partners Warren Harding (1924–2002) and Wayne Merry (1931–2019) completed the first ascent of The Nose on El ...
Former congresswoman, mountain climber, and lifelong adventurer Jolene Unsoeld began climbing with the Mazamas in 1949, her first ascent being the south side of Mt. Hood in logging boots with caulked soles. In the summer of 1950, after her first y...
On the Merzbacher Glacier, with Pik Oskal on the left and unclimbed Peak 5,061m on the right. In August and September, we (Joris Korevaar and Arjen Pieters) traveled to the lower Kayindy (Kaindy) River valley and made three probable first asc...
Ali Sadpara was first and foremost a great alpinist and not “simply” a high-altitude porter (HAP). He had the ambition to create a new generation of strong climbers in Pakistan and to replicate in his country a tourism industry similar to the one ...
I was ten when I first met the writer and mountaineer David Roberts, who was sitting at my parents’ kitchen table with Jon Krakauer and another friend. Huge wire-rimmed glasses framed David’s face, adding intensity to an already owl-like gaze, and...
In a gesture befitting how he lived his life, close to nature and its poetry, my father, Herb, chose the harvest moon, September 20, 2021, for his departure. His focus around the appreciation of nature, both in its raw elements and its lyric forms...