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Clint Helander’s Social Media Guest Postings September 21-27
Between September 21 and 27, 2015, Alpinist contributor Clint Helander posted his photos and stories on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages as part of our Alpinist Community project. Helander has been featured on our website and his words appear in Alpinist 32, The Relentless Raven, Alpinist 46, Local Hero: Mark Westman, and Alpinist 49,…
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Apex 22: Reaching the Apogee of Alpine Design
The Apex 22 compact-climbing pack has a tapered shape, minimal compression straps and zero extras. I tested it on single and multi-day trips and during a nine-day AMGA Alpine Guide course in the Cascades this summer.
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Craig Muderlak’s Social Media Guest Postings September 14-20
Between September 14 and 20, 2015, Alpinist contributor Craig Muderlak posted his art, photos and stories on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages as part of our Alpinist Community project. Muderlak’s artwork has been featured on both our website and in Alpinist 50 and 51. This web feature is a compilation of his work from…
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Rab Muztag Jacket: Lightweight Armor for Alpine Weather
Alpine climbing in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia inevitably involves extended travel through wet weather. While attempting an enchainment of Mt. Waddington (13,186′) and its neighboring peaks, I wanted a lightweight shell that was waterproof and breathable enough to wear during high-output exercise. Unlike my other shells, which fall short in at least one…
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Arc’teryx Acrux FL GTX: Robust Kickers
As a guide, I’ve burned through several pairs of approach shoes hiking up rough gullies and talus fields. When the Arc’teryx Acrux FL GTX showed up at my doorstep, I hoped they would last more than most. Over spring and summer, I used them on short and long approaches, through torrential thunderstorms, on muddy trails…
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Into the Shadow Chapter 2
THE BEDROOM WAS DARK. Ten minutes, just ten more minutes. I curled the covers over my head. How do you prepare yourself? Soon I’d get up and make the daily prison commute. Ten heavy steel doors would open and close with a clunk as sharp as a cork pulled: ten inmates escorted to the gymnasium.
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Into the Shadow Chapter 1
STARS FLICKER IN A SLOW-SPINNING SKY. Old snow crackles. The moraine–a rubble-strewn lunar surface–creaks under our feet. A yellow moon lights our path. Ice gleams. Houseman and I are creeping like thieves. We’re scared the mountain might hear our approach.
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Photographer Jason Gebauer: The Silent Observer
We caught up with photographer Jason Gebauer when he was passing through Winter Park, Colo., while scouting landscape to shoot this coming winter. A resident of Golden, Colo., Gebauer is on the road two months a year but gets out climbing and photographing about three days a week. “I mostly shoot climbing and climbing lifestyle,…
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Dru Part II–1983: La Voie Lesueur, First Winter Ascent
THE CLANGOR OF OUR SKI BOOTS on steel stairs broke the winter silence atop the Grands Montets. I turned, my gaze riveted on the North Face of the Drus: “It’s there,” I told my climbing partner Thierry Renault. “Yes, yes, yes,” he murmured in the Frank Zappa style of talking he favored at the time.…
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Mountain Profile: The Aiguille du Dru Part II (1955-2015)
“It seemed built to perpetuate our dreams”–thus Guido Magnone described the Aiguille du Dru in The West Face. Ian Parnell relives the history of a peak poised between mountaineering fantasies and environmental realities. Royal Robbins, Claude Remy, Andy Parkin and Jerome Sullivan share dispatches from the past to the future.
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Between the Lines
IN A BRICK HOUSE in the tree-lined village of Hildenborough, England, a Tibetan woman listened to her British husband translate books and newspapers, so she could hear how foreign writers depicted her homeland. It was the early twentieth century, in the midst of the first British attempts on Everest.
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Evolv Luchador: Versatility, Performance and Unexpected Comfort
The Luchadors are constructed of a synthetic upper with a slightly cambered, semi-asymmetric last and an unlined-leather footbed. The midsole shank keeps foot fatigue to a minimum. And they flex enough to set the Trax High Friction rubber on subtle smears. A padded, single-piece tongue cushions the top of the foot that protects the laces…
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Local Hero
IT WAS CLOSING NIGHT OF THE YEARLONG RUN OF PAVLA OVER THE PRECIPICE, AND EVERY SEAT IN Ljubljana’s Slovenian Youth Theatre was occupied. Actors lowered themselves from the ceiling, or edged in from stage left, tiptoeing along holds attached to the wall. I sat spellbound, absorbing the energy from 270 audience members, concentrating on every…
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Smith and Kadatz: Free Climbing on Baffin Island
“I believe that in Hell, they make you posthole,” Anna Smith told Alpinist, recalling the conditions she and her climbing partner, Michelle Kadatz, endured while shuttling a loads to one of Baffin Island’s big wall routes during July.
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