On May 22, a snowboarder (male, 31) lost his bearings in whiteout conditions while descending from a summit attempt and had to spend the night out, leading to a severe case of hypothermia. According to a post he made at Facebook after these event...
Melrose Mountain is a relatively new climbing area, near the South Carolina border, that hosts top-rope, trad, mixed, and sport routes (5.7–5.11). On December 19, Jesse Watson (32) and his partner EC (31) were finishing their day by climbing Feeli...
On June 14, I was belaying a very experienced climber who was attempting to stick-clip through the crux on a route. The climber clipped the second bolt from the ground and then began to pull up on the belay strand of the rope while I pulled in sla...
On May 27, following a two-week period of heavy rain, a pair of very experienced climbers planned to do the popular route Break on Through (5.10a) on the Circus Wall of Sentinel Buttress. The route begins from a ledge approximately 60 feet up an a...
On August 1 a party of three, Michael Hall (26), M. Johnson (26), and D. Jones (28), were climbing Cowboys and Heroes (5.7), a 40-foot route in the Foreign Trade Zone area. Hall was leading the route and fell from a harder variation near the top o...
During the late afternoon on October 1, a solo climber notified 911 and reported he was uninjured but physically exhausted and unable to finish his climb. He said he was high on the second pitch of the Great Arch (3 pitches, 5.5). Wilkes County di...
On October 11, Alamosa Volunteer Search and Rescue (AVSAR) was contacted about a missing female climber, who was last heard from at 3 p.m. the previous day at the summit of Ellingwood Point (14,042 feet). The missing person was described as Joy Ci...
On August 30, I (male, 59) started up Pas de Deux (5.8 PG-13). I placed two or three good cams in the first 20 feet of the climb. Above that, I saw a couple of places I could have placed cams, not far above my highest piece, but decided to move hi...
During early December 2020, on a way-too-early ice hunting trip to the northwest face of Snoqualmie Mountain (6,278’) with Tom Beirne and Christian Junkar, I spotted a plastered smear that I had never noticed previously. This smear was located muc...
In 2020 the Mohonk Preserve experienced a statistically anomalous year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For two months, the land was closed to visitors and no access passes were sold. When the preserve was open, there was a significant increase in no...
On February 21, Callaway Lewis (female, age 8), her older brother, and her father, Anthony, were climbing around the Cactus Chimney Boulders, one of several small bouldering areas just east of the city limits, when the rock Callaway was climbing s...
Around noon on March 9, the AMC Hermit Lake caretaker reported seeing a person “tomahawking”—i.e., falling end over end—the length of the gully called Chute in Tuckerman Ravine. The caretaker and a snow ranger responded and were pleased to find th...
On September 25, at about 4 p.m., a climber (age 68) was attempting to climb Dead Sea Equestrian (5.7 sport) at the Parking Lot Wall of Rumney. Near the top, approximately 50 feet above the base, he called for his belayer to “take” his weight onto...
On September 20, Ben Kessel (34) and Emma Leigh Donahue (30s) were climbing Moby Grape (8 pitches, 5.8 PG-13) on Cannon Cliff. Both were active within the MIT Outing Club and experienced rock climbers. Conditions were windy but pleasant, and there...
On October 31 at approximately 7 a.m., my climbing partner and I set out to climb Solar Slab in Oak Creek Canyon. At about 8:30 a.m. we arrived at the base of a large gully in the Lower Solar Slab area. [Editor’s Note: Solar Slab, a classic multi-...
On March 20, a pair of climbers (Climber 1, male, 28, and Climber 2, female, 27, both intermediate-level climbers) headed to the Main Crag at Allenspur and packed their “all around” 50-meter rope, since that length is adequate for most (but not al...
On August 23, Eric (64) and his climbing partner Ed (57) were planning to link the standard route up the Watchtower (5.8) with Silver Foxes (5.8) on the Watchtower’s upper tier, and then finish on Spare Rib (5.8), all traditional lines on the east...
Photo by François Lebeau Lead climbing is a two-person sport. Arguably, the climber has the easy job—they climb and try not to let go. The belayer has the hard job of managing the rope and continuously planning for a fall. They are constantly...
Around noon on October 3, a climber took a lead fall near the top of Trundling Kentucky (5.7 sport) at the Bruise Brothers Wall. The belayer failed to arrest the leader’s fall, resulting in a 35- to 40-foot ground fall onto rocky terrain at the ba...
On October 13, a climber swung into the wall after taking a lead fall on Air-Ride Equipped (5.11a sport) at Solarium in Muir Valley, resulting in a broken and dislocated ankle. On October 16, an experienced female climber fell off Push Present (5...