In July, Chaz Langelier, Cam Smith, Brian Prince and I made the long haul to Lake Basin to check out this photogenic place and attempt a large and likely unclimbed arête, photos of which had intrigued us for the last couple of years. With an abu...
In early June, Jeremy Ross, Sean Sullivan, and I climbed the highly recommended Michael Strassman Memorial Route (700’, III 5.10d) on the south face of Lone Pine Peak. We were planning to check out the south face of nearby Peak 3,986m on the fol...
North Dome, near Road’s End in Kings Canyon National Park, showing the two lines completed by Daniel Jeffcoach, Vitaliy Musiyenko, and Brian Prince in summer 2019. Lucid Dream (1,500’, 9 pitches, V 5.11 A2) is on the left, and Great White Nor...
Over the course of two separate trips, Joey Jarrell and I completed a new route on the Cartago Wall, the second known line on the granodiorite wall (see AAJ 2018), and possibly the first to summit the formation. We set off on our first trip on ...
In June, my good friend Andy McQuillen and I spent nine days exploring the rock walls of the Tuttle Creek drainage. We did a variety of fun routes, the longest being a new line on the prominent right-leaning arête on the left side of the south fac...
One of the mythical Sierra places I had always wanted to check out was the Spring Lake Wall, tucked in to the north of Sawtooth Pass in Sequoia National Park. Eliot Bernhagen and Tad McCrea were keen to join forces, so in August the three of us hi...
In 1985, I was managing the Bearpaw Meadows High Sierra Camp in Sequoia National Park when Claude and Nancy Fiddler passed through during a multi-week backpacking and climbing blitz. I was able to help them out of a pinch with some food when the...
Pleasant Point (9,690’) is located two miles north of the historic mining town of Cerro Gordo in the southern Inyo Mountains, a limestone range to the east of the Owens River Valley and south of the White Mountains. When viewed from the Owens Va...
In May, Chaz Langelier and I checked out the largest tower in the group of rocks collectively labeled the Broken Towers in the old Sequoia guidebook. It is immediately west of Castle Rock Spire and plainly visible from many vantages around Moro ...
I first saw the east side of Seven Gables (13,080’) several years ago while traveling through the area with my wife. Subsequent research revealed a confusing climbing history that seemed to be only focused on neighboring Seven Gables North (Peak...
A few years ago, Richard Leversee encouraged Brian Prince and me to take over a project he had worked on for several years in the 1990s with Scott Cosgrove, Jay Smith, and Jim Zellers: creating an all-free line up the prow of the Watchtower, ori...
On January 26, Joel Kauffman and I made the strenuous approach up Fifth Canyon in knee-deep snow to the Rocketship, where we had been watching an ice and mixed line form throughout the month. On the right side of the formation, a north-facing sn...
Over the course of 2019, solo and with several partners, I climbed three ice couloirs that were likely first ascents in the eastern Sierra. The colorful and obscure Piute Crags, southeast of Mt. Emerson, are plainly visible along the Bishop skyli...
Tad McCrea and I made the notorious approach up rugged George Creek late on the afternoon of July 21, bivouacking near the confluence of the north and main forks of the creek around 10,000’. We cast off for the long northeast ridge of Trojan Pea...
On August 8, my wife, Giselle Field, and I established a lovely camp by Crocker Lake and the following morning started up the north pillar of Mt. Crocker (12,457’). This imposing feature sees little to no sunlight, so we were freezing cold the e...
On August 25, Katie Lambert and I topped out a new 16-pitch route on the north face of the Citadel (11,744’) in Kings Canyon National Park. Our original ambition was to free the original north face route (IV 5.7 A2, Herbert-Hennek-Lauria; see...
Bubbs Creek, named for the 19th century prospector John Bubbs, flows 16 miles through a deep, glaciated canyon to the mighty Kings River. Equidistant from the east and west sides of the Sierra, the drainage’s namesake wall rises prominently from t...
In 1989, Steve Porcella and I scoped out the massive climbing potential on the west side of the Middle Palisade massif, which includes peaks like Norman Clyde, Middle Palisade, and Disappointment. The obvious standout line was a massive chimney ...
Having both been born within a few days of each other in mid-August, Drew Smith and I have made a tradition of celebrating together with an annual backcountry getaway. This year we decided to make it a real party and invited our good buds Jack C...
This year in southwest Utah began with a wet winter and spring, swinging wildly to a record dry spell over the summer and autumn, allowing for more climbing in the monsoon season than the average year. In March, Derrick Fassbender and Steffan G...