In August, Brandon Thau invited me out to the southeast face of Locke Rock, northeast of Courtright Reservoir, to climb a line he had his eye on. We started climbing to the right of the rarely-done runout classic Best of the West (1,000’, 5.11c ...
In June, Chaz Langelier and I made one of the longest approaches possible in the High Sierra in order to climb a few remote gems on the Great Western Divide. We approached via the Shepherd Pass Trail, over the ca 12,000’ pass and descended to an u...
“Watch me!” I yelled to Connor Chilcott and Derek Field below me as I climbed above a sharp flake that would mangle me badly should I fall. I did not have the right gear to protect the 5.10 offwidth I was climbing, and could not allow a slip. W...
In July, Daniel Jeffcoach and I hiked over to the Gorge of Despair from Kings Canyon to check out a wall we had seen a few years prior while descending from the Watsi Wall near Tehipite Dome (see AAJ 2017). We approached from the Lewis Creek trai...
Ula-gol (2,911m, 51°47'34.71"N, 101°26'29.42"E) rises above the Ulan-gol Valley in the Eastern Sayan Mountains, about 200km west-southwest of the large Siberian city of Irkutsk. From just after the village of Hoito-gol, which can be reached by veh...
I first met Marc-André Leclerc around a campfire in the Yosemite high country. Sitting across from him in the thin, crisp evening air I could feel his energy. He’d just come from a solo winter-climbing trip to Patagonia and his eyes burned with th...
In 2018, Will Stanhope and I took a trip into the Eldred Valley in search of unclimbed stone and solace after the loss of a friend. We balked at several options but finally quested up to the difficult-to-access Amon Rûdh. After a multi-hour hike t...
From April 29 to June 10, 2019, a team of French climbers and skiers traveled more than 650km by foot, skis, and boat through the wilderness of Wrangell–St. Elias and Kluane national parks, scribing a great semicircle around Mt. Logan (5,959m), Ca...
In September 2016, Libor Forst, Jeff Sandifort (the head guide from Climbing South America), and I spent a week in and around Sajama National Park. We intended to climb Cerro Acotango (6,052m, 18°22'58.35"S, 69°2'51.73"W), a dormant volcano likely...
Foreshortened view of the Tronchey Wall of the Grandes Jorasses, seen from the upper Pra Sec Glacier. (1) Original Route (1,400m, probably ED2 VI and A2, Gogna-Machetto, 1972). (2) Phantom Direct (ED2/3 VI/5 or 6, Grassi-Luzi-Rossi, 1985). (3) P...
It was January 2020, and I was looking for a climbing project for the summer—something really different, a challenge that would test my limits, but also something with less environmental impact than an expedition involving many planes. After som...
The northeast face of Þverártindsegg and a recent avalanche. (1) Sinful Pleasures. (2) Finnbogason-Sigurðsson original route. The normal route to the summit follows the right skyline ridge from the north. Þverártindsegg (1,554m, 64°12'36.90"...
On October 16, Árni Stefán Haldorsen and Íris Ragnarsdóttir Pedersen climbed the west face of Rótarfjallshnjúkur (1,848m, 63°58'36.02"N, 16°39'40.24"W). This peak lies on the southern rim of the Öræfajökull, a large, ice-filled caldera that last e...
After four previous attempts in the seven years, He Chuan, Sun Bin, and Wang Zhen completed the second ascent of Jiayou, the route that Yasushi Yamanoi from Japan climbed in 2005 up the north face of Potala Shan (5,428m). Yamanoi soloed the route ...
IN BRIEF In The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest (Avid Reader Press, $28), Ed Caesar tells the story of Maurice Wilson, who in 1933 crash-landed his Gipsy Moth biplane on the slopes of Everest, intending to solo the m...
WINTER 8000: CLIMBING THE WORLD’S HIGHEST MOUNTAINS IN THE COLDEST SEASON. Bernadette McDonald. Mountaineers Books, 2020. Paperback, 272 pages, $21.95. When a team of 10 Nepalese mountaineers reached the summit of K2 in the waning hours of Janua...
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL ON THE WALL. Silvo Karo. Translated by Gorazd Pipenbaher. Self-published, 2020. Paperback, 304 pages, €25. I bumped into Silvo Karo and Mauro “Bubu” Bole on the streets of Huaraz, Peru, in 2000. Asked what they’d been up to, Silvo ...
EMILIO COMICI: ANGEL OF THE DOLOMITES. David Smart. Rocky Mountain Books, 2020. Hardcover, 248 pages, $32. David Smart’s new biography of Emilio Comici (1901–1940) draws on a variety of sources to paint a nuanced picture of Comici, a man of geni...
EDGE OF THE MAP: THE MOUNTAIN LIFE OF CHRISTINE BOSKOFF. Johanna Garton. Mountaineers Books, 2020. Paperback, 240 pages, $19.95. Johanna Garton’s Edge of the Map follows the life and high-altitude climbs of Christine Boskoff, a widely admired and...
TO LIVE: FIGHTING FOR LIFE ON THE KILLER MOUNTAIN. Élisabeth Revol. Vertebrate Press (U.K.), 2020. Paperback, 160 pages, £24. In the winter of 2013, French alpinist Élisabeth Revol made her first attempt on Nanga Parbat, marking the beginning o...