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There and Back Again: Chapter One
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The past two years I’ve either been pregnant or a new mom to our 14-month-old boy, Theo. Reflecting on There and Back Again reminds me of a time where climbing and everything surrounding it was my sole focus in life.
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Cliffs Ahoy: Vertical Sailing and Sea Ditties in the Arctic Circle
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Last summer a group of climbers navigated the chill waters of the North Atlantic to access remote big wall routes in the Uumannaq area of Greenland, Gibbs Fjord, Nanavut and Sam Ford Fjord, Baffin Island. During this trip they authored ten new long routes in alpine style. This wasn’t their maiden voyage, but a reprise of a 2010 adventure–a style of climbing the team dubbed “vertical sailing.”
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Timed Just Right
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A gentle breeze drifts over my bright-yellow bivi bag, tickling evergreen bows just overhead. We doze beneath magnificent trees, poised at the foot of North Maroon Peak thousands of feet above Aspen, Colorado. A pyramid of choss just beginning to shed its winter blanket of white looms over us and just now seems in condition for an alpine ascent.
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Photo Essay: Bad to the Bone
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This past April, Jonathan Griffith and Will Sim endured avalanches, rotten rock and tent-flattening winds to author a new route on the unclimbed northwest face on Mt. Deborah (12,339′) in the Alaska Range. Sim calls their route, Bad to the Bone, “The most spooky and unnerving thing I have ever been on.” The pair declined to grade its difficulty, and does not recommend a second ascent.
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Alpinist Sponsors Upcoming Squamish Climbing Festival: Arc’teryx Climbing Academy
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Squamish, B.C. A salty breeze washes inland from Howe Sound, tangling the air at the busy Port of Squamish. Snowcapped mountains rise beyond the docks, hemming in the broad valley with dark misty forests.
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Arctic Rage
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This week we are re-posting Kevin Mahoney’s account of Arctic Rage, (WI6+ R A2, 4500′), from Alpinist 8. Mahoney and partner Ben Gilmore climbed this new route on The Mooses Tooth in March 2004.
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Interview with Angie Payne
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Angie Payne, a multi-time national bouldering champion and the first woman to climb V13, recently took a break from bouldering to go on an adventure with expedition climber Mike Libecki. Together they climbed her first big wall, the 3,264-foot rock spire called Poumaka on an island in French Polynesia.
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The Face of the Future
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LIKE A LIGHTHOUSE DOMINATING the sea…. The Sea of Ice. The Drus seem to have conquered the Mer de Glace and stilled its waves, until the glacier no longer dares defy their steep mountain walls. Large pale stains, signs of recent rockfall, gleam like salt crystals deposited during some earlier epoch when the Sea of Ice flowed powerful and high, before it began to die down and to draw back, slowly and gently, leaving behind only vile shores of scree. Tourists arrive in uninterrupted floods to view Mont Blanc–merely to find its pallid summit drowned in a mass of satellite…
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Mike Libecki Interview
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Last week we posted a piece about Mike Libecki and Angie Payne’s ascent of 3,264-foot Poumaka on the island of Ua Pou in the South Pacific. Here, we interview Libecki to find out more about the expedition and his personal background.
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The Drus, 1952 Vintage
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IN 1952 A SPIRE of monolithic granite presented a high challenge to the climbers of the day–a dare that the setting sun outlined each evening, illuminating its burnished slabs with a red flash that no alpinist could ignore. The West Face of the Drus had a reputation for invincibility. “There, in any case, is something that will never be vanquished by man,” declared Pierre Allain, who had observed the 1000-meter wall during his first ascent of the North Face in 1935.
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The North Face of the Drus
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DURING THE 1980S, WHEN I was the editor-in-chief of the French magazine Alpinisme et Randonnee, I spent several days in Grenoble each year for an international trade show. My meetings were exhausting work, happily interrupted by visits with good friends, which allowed me to forget, for an hour or two, everything that the show signified: that the mountains had become a business and that we–the journalists, the guides and the technical consultants–were all part of it.
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Solo on Friable Rock on Cerro Marconi Sur
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On April 16, several days after his partner Thomas Bubendorfer experienced foot problems and the pair aborted an attempt on Cerro Torre, Austrian alpinist Markus Pucher made the first ascent, solo, of the remote West Face of Cerro Marconi Sur. The 8,150-foot (2484-meter) peak is the high point of a jagged ridge in the Cordon Marconi range northwest of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre on the eastern edge of the Patagonia Icecap.
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Jean-Esteril Charlet and Mary Isabella Straton: A Fairy Tale
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SEPTEMBER 22, 1871, WAS ONE of those magical autumn days, when your gaze pierces farther than usual across the crystalline air. Mists had already consumed the valleys, obscuring most signs of human presence–apart from the occasional plume of distant smoke that rose straight up.
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Dean Potter’s First Visit to Patagonia
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It was 1999, and this was our first climbing trip to Patagonia. His dark, unkempt hair hid his eyes, and his jaw betrayed no emotion. But as the plane’s wheels screeched along the tarmac, he looked over at me with concern and asked, “How do you say ‘bathroom’ in Spanish?”
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Mystery Brings Adventure: Film Highlights Libecki-Payne Ascent of Remote Spire on French Polynesian Island
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When the unlikely pair of Mike Libecki and Angie Payne teamed up to climb the south face of 3,264-foot Poumaka on the jungle island of Ua Pou in French Polynesia, they knew it would push them beyond their emotional limits.
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The Alpinist Saga
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Fifty issues deep, and we’re still pushing for the infinite summit. The irrepressible Tami Knight directs a romp back through the years, with essays by Christian Beckwith, Leo Houlding, Andrew Burr, Emilie Lee, Majka Burhardt, Andreas Schmidt, Jack Tackle, Barry Blanchard and Kyle Dempster–and imagery from more than a decade in print.
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No Guarantees
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At noon on April 25, 2015, I was walking with my client on a rocky trail in the valley between the Nepali villages of Chukhung and Dingboche. The air smelled of wood smoke and juniper. A handful of shaggy yaks grazed in the distance. There was no wind. The ground shook without warning. I lurched sideways. Rocks the size of pickup trucks crashed down the valley walls to our left and right, bouncing like rubber balls before shattering into splinters.
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Video: Speed Ascent of El Cap’s Zenyatta Mondatta
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On October 3, 2014, David Allfrey, Skiy DeTray and Cheyne Lempe climbed the 16-pitch A4 El Capitan testpiece Zenyatta Mondatta, shaving several hours off the speed record. Yesterday, DeTray’s cousin Dave Coy sent us an 8.5-minute film, containing footage he captured during their climb.
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“Give Everest a Break:” An Interview with Norbu Tenzing Norgay
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We talk with Norbu Tenzing Norgay, son of Tenzing Norgay Sherpa (who summited Mt. Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953), to learn about the unfolding humanitarian crisis on Everest.
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Reflecting on A Friend’s Climbing Path
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Ten years after a brutal fall left him shattered, James Lucas achieved a life-long goal: a free ascent of Freerider on El Capitan in a single day. Jens Holsten reflects on his friend’s accomplishment, and on a life committed to climbing.
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New Mixed Climbs on Norway’s Senja Island
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Senja Island, the second largest island in Norway, is a spectacular and pristine land that faces the open Norwegian Sea on the country’s ragged northwest coast. The coastal region, with its fickle winter weather, is perfect for mixed climbing protected by trad gear.
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Big Reinhold, Little Reinhold: Chapter 4
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The Call
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Lately I’ve been missing the quiet wilderness of Argentina and have been feeling the pull to return to the simplicity of those windy peaks on the edge of the Southern Hemisphere. In 2002 I visited the smoking mountains of El Chalten and entered into perhaps the most powerful flow state I’ve ever experienced. The Call describes this vague process. I don’t understand it any better today than I did back then, but every moment I’m pursuing my arts is an attempt to further the deepness of these elevated states.– Dean S. Potter
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Never Ending
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Last week, we published a NewsWire by Jens Holsten on the 1,250-foot alpine route he and Vern Nelson Jr. established in the Cascade Mountains in memory of alpinist Chad Kellogg. As a follow-up, Holsten agreed to republish his story Never Ending from Alpinist 47 on his travels with Kellogg in the Cascades and their last climb together in Patagonia.
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First All-Female Ascent of Cerro Torre via the Ragni Route
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On February 21, 2015, Caroline (Caro) North and Christina Huber (AU) reached the summit of 10,262-foot Cerro Torre via the Ragni Route (M4 90 degrees, 600m), marking the first all-female team ascent, done free and unsupported, of the Patagonian tower.
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Chapter 3: Big Reinhold, Little Reinhold
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American Horror Story: A Climber’s Obsession
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I first noticed the line, at the Sabbatical Wall in Indian Creek, Utah, last spring. I was mesmerized by its 150-foot wildly overhanging dihedral system composed of multiple offwidth roofs, all set on alluring red-brown Wingate 200 feet off the ground.
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Profile: Ken Yager, Winner of the David R. Brower Conservation Award
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It was love at first sight when Ken Yager met Yosemite Valley for the first time in 1972. Living in Davis, California, 13-year-old Yager and his parents drove five hours east in the family car to Yosemite. The first thing he wanted to see in the Valley was El Capitan, a 3,000-foot-high granite monolith that loomed above the valley floor.
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Craig Muderlak: Coloring Outside the Lines
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“The adventure for the race was unknown, and it could have been over my head,” Craig Muderlak says. “With most of my illustrations, I don’t know how they’ll turn out and I have no guarantee of a good outcome.”
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Chapter 2: Big Reinhold, Little Reinhold
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