I’d been looking for something like this all these years, and it was right on my doorstep. I looked at it almost every day without seeing it—until August 2023. A START WITH GLITCHES Peter and I are sitting on the train from Thun, discussing the ...
In 2022, we made an attempt on the unclimbed northwest face of Ranrapalca (6,162m), but we’d barely reached its base before we retreated, exhausted. We had been active in the Cordillera Blanca for two months and found the ascent too difficult in o...
In late summer, the first known climbs were completed on the Great Rapids Ridge, a 70km-long system of granite domes and walls in the Kolyma Mountains of far eastern Siberia, an area better known for former Soviet gulags than for rock climbing. A ...
Flat Top (6,100m) from the north. (1) Start of the 1980 first ascent by the northeast and east ridges; a hidden couloir led to a col, above which the team climbed the ridge and left flank. (2) Tomorrow Is Another Day, the first ascent of the 1,4...
Mt. Dickey’s 5,000-foot east face, showing (1) Aim for the Bushes (Cornell-Marvell-Rousseau, 2023) and (2) Blood from the Stone (Easton-Steck, 2002). Other routes not shown. Photo by Matt Cornell. I kept my head down and stared into the ’sch...
The ice around me gleamed as I slid into my dry suit and trusty Crocs. I fashioned an improvised harness out of skinny Dyneema and tied in—it hardly seemed like real life as James slowly lowered me down steep ice into cobalt-blue water. I stretche...
For about the last decade, I’ve made a yearly pilgrimage to the Arctic north, where each winter I hope to squeeze some climbing into rare days off from ski guiding. The Nordland, more than anywhere else I’ve climbed, is a hard place for weather, c...
The Rangtik Tokpo is surrounded by towering granite walls that can be reached in one to three hours walk from base camp. Moritz Sigmund and I, together with five friends from the Dolomites, followed the call of these rock faces to explore their po...
Click here to download the comprehensive index for the American Alpine Journal (AAJ), indexing the key place names and people covered in every edition of the AAJ from 1929 to 2024. Some readers may find it helpful to scan or browse subjects in thi...
With its vertical, anvil-like shape, Stetind (1,392m) rises straight out of the ocean, about 80km southwest of Narvik, and for sailors it’s a well-known landmark. In 2002, Stetind was selected as Norway’s national mountain. Stetind has a climbing ...
Greg Boswell starting up The Horns of Segla on the north face of Segla, with the first-pitch offwidth above him. Photo by Hamish Frost. My wife and I visited Senja during a van tour around Norway in the summer of 2022, and I took a photo of t...
In early September, Vitaliy Musiyenko, Hayden Wyatt, and I set off from the Salt Lake City airport with 400 pounds of gear and a crippling curiosity. I had forfeited my season of field-biology work for another international trip, an increasingly c...
During the first modern survey of the Tatsienlu Massif, led by Arnold Heim in the 1930s, nine major peaks were named. Prior to 2023, seven had been summited, leaving only Yipingfeng (5,800m, 30°1’3.73”N, 102°2’27.81”E) and neighboring Erpingfeng (...
Pik 4,430 meters in center left. (The summit was measured at 4,431 meters with a GPS watch.) The scree-filled approach past Pik Ortutyubek (3,895m; 3,850m in the photo) took a day and a half. The climbers descended the far side of Pik 4,430. Pho...
Looking east at Makalu (left) and Cholatse, showing (1) northwest ridge (1988), (2) Just One Solution (2023), (3) West Rib (2023), and (4) Southwest ridge (1982). Photo by Zdeněk Hák. Radoslav Groh and I planned to climb a new route on the we...
Jan Kreisinger, Jakub Vlček, and I travelled to Nepal in the post-monsoon season, planning to climb a new route on the west face of Tengi Ragi Tau (6,938m). Kreisinger and Karel Roudnicky had already attempted our proposed line in 2021 but descen...
Tilman’s Col seen from Peak 6,102m on the east side of the upper Langtang Glacier. Left of the col stands Chumsundo (6,581m, the summit lying on the Tibetan side of the border), while to the right is part of the southwest ridge of Langtang Ri. P...
Also known as Pangri Goldumba, Goldum (6,632m, 28°19’44.10”N, 85°43’25.08”E) is situated toward the head of the Langtang Glacier, on the border with Tibet, directly opposite Xixabangma. The only known prior attempt took place in 1962, when Lord Pa...
Our five-member Basque expedition to the Suru and Shafat valleys had eyes for the north face of Shafat Fortress, but on arrival at base camp, those same eyes were immediately drawn to a beautiful rock spire. This peak of about 5,760m is situated o...