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Poetry Feature: Three Poems by David Wilson
“Tell me again about being single-minded, / about couloirs bulging with fat blue ice / and dawn arriving high in the Alps; / how a slope exists at a perfect angle / where it all might kick in again.” Read three poems from David Wilson.
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Home: an Index
“There is glacial power in language, in naming things. I am here because my mother gave me a vocabulary for motion,” poet Devi Lockwood writes about her experiences growing up as the daughter of a mountaineer–in this essay for Alpinist 55. Subscribe today or preorder at the Alpinist.com store.
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Trango Piranha Knife: Sharp, Low Profile and Opens Bottles
As a guide, I’m often asked what I carry on my harness. In addition to standard climbing hardware, plus prussic cords, a Tibloc, and a Micro-Traxion for glacier travel, I carry a knife. Once my clients see the knife, they often reference Joe Simpson’s classic mountaineering epic, Touching the Void. Unlike the moment of decision…
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Local Hero: Clint Helander on Mark Westman
Why Mark Westman should be famous (A postscript to Alpinist 19). May’s everlasting sun hovered in a low, lateral arc over the Alaska Range, bathing the massive peaks in fiery light. Waves of clouds washed up the Kahiltna Glacier and flooded the lower mountains in an ever-darkening fog.
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Brooks-Range Drift 15 Down Sleeping Bag: Lightweight, Water-Resistant
The insulation in the Brooks Range Drift 15 sleeping bag is treated with DownTek, a down coating that prevents the feathers from absorbing water. Since water rolls off the down, the feathers stay light and fluffy–keeping you warm. Unlike synthetic sleeping bags, which are typically bulkier and heavier than down, treated down sleeping bags offer…
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The Path
It’s 3 a.m., July 2015. We walk through the darkness, headlamps illuminating our path. A cool breeze awakens the trees, and the creek bubbles to life as we switchback up the trail. Our movement becomes rhythmic. Three hours pass rapidly. Faint light paints the horizon, and the mountains are stirred awake…
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Glen Denny Remembers Valley Walls in the 1960s
Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing and Living in Yosemite by Glen Denny. Published by Yosemite Conservancy, May 2016. 210 pages. Paperback. $18.95. During the 1960s, Glen Denny, a young college dropout and budding photographer, was part of the famous crew of riff-raff climbers who spent their days in Yosemite Valley, honing skills…
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Poetry Feature: “Kalymnos”
This poem was inspired by climbing in Kalymnos for the first time a few years ago and thinking about that point in the day when you feel as if you’ve climbed out of your own skin.
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The Climbing Life: She Climbed Alone
As a young climber in the 1990s, I developed a strange habit. Each year I found myself obsessively searching the American Alpine Club’s Accidents in North American Mountaineering for entries about women.
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The Merino Air Hoody: A Most-in-One Base Layer
Recently I added Patagonia’s Merino Air Hoody base layer to my collection. Unlike my other merino wool items, The Air Hoody, with its fluffy appearance, resembles a thin, non-itchy sweater more than a typical next-to-skin layer.
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The Climbing Life: The March of Folly
“I’M SO GLAD TO SEE YOU BOYS,” Lee Sorenson shouted as he ran across the campsite toward us, his bearded face beaming with love and relief. His oldest son, Tobin, and I were a full day and a night overdue. It was March 1975, and we’d just made the second ascent of the Valley’s first…
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Darwin’s Disappointment
In September 1833, Charles Darwin set out for the four peaks of the Sierra de la Ventana alone, lured by local murmurs of caves and forests and veins of silver and gold. The small range was barely visible from the port of Bahia Blanca, a notch in the north-central Argentine coast. There, the H.M.S. Beagle…
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Mammut 8.7mm Serenity Dry: Light, Stiff and Specialized
Although rope technology has greatly improved in the twenty-some years since I started climbing, I was still skeptical when a lime-green Mammut 8.7mm Serenity rope showed up on my doorstep. The manufacturer states this rope is designed for single, double and twin configurations. Mammut also says the rope is designed to stretch 31 percent when…
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Solo Faces: The Camaraderie of Divine or Reckless Brotherhood
Before I left for Chamonix to go hiking in the French Alps, I borrowed Solo Faces by James Salter from the lending library at work. My list of must-reads was long and only growing longer, but the ghostly mountain landscape of its cover caught my eye–a silhouetted man ascending a jagged peak.
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