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Kinder’s Blunder and the Need to Cultivate our Vertical Gardens
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When I was a new teenage climber, I had to talk my parents gently through the mechanics of leading, following and rappelling, but it was their worries that taught me to think beyond the accepted norms of those around me. I came home gushing: my friends were putting up a first ascent from the ground up. Yet my mother didn’t adopt the same enthusiasm….
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Wyoming Outlaw: WI5 M-Thought Provoking
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Early this season, climbers Shawn Gregory, Chris Guyer and the intrepid Aaron Mulkey sniffed around cowboy country for climbable ice smears. Along the way, an ice pillar gives these desperadoes more than they bargained for.
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‘Spicy All the Time’ on North Twin: A Photo Essay
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Canadian Jon Walsh and American Josh Wharton completed the second ascent of the North Pillar (5.10d A2, 1500m) of Twins Tower on North Twin, a climb known for its horrible rock and technical nature on a face once described as “…dark, sheer and gloomy…like a bad dream.”
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Fear or Aspiration: The Future of Climbing in the Karakoram?
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In the aftermath of the Nanga Parbat attack, Swedish alpinist and conflict dynamics analyst David Falt looks at some of the potential risks and possibilities for the future of Karakoram mountaineering and peace in northern Pakistan.
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Obituary: Peter Sperka (1955-2013)
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80 THE TROLL’S GIFT
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Squamish Series: The Early Days
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The late 1950s and early 1960s marked the arrival of Highway 99 in that small logging town, and a shift in climbers’ interest from peaks with pointy summits to rock faces with technical challenges. In this Web feature, Ed Cooper and Dick Culbert reflect on those early days leading up to the first ascent of the Grand Wall in 1961.
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‘The Old Breed’: A Special Feature from the Film
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“We have a rule, climbing in the mountains-you just don’t fall,” says veteran alpinist Mark Richey, “…but you do, sometimes.” Before leaving for the Eastern Karakoram to attempt Saser Kangri II, then the world’s second-highest unreached summit, Freddie Wilkinson and Mark Richey get a first-hand reminder of how abruptly the climb could go wrong.
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Speed Soloing the Chief: An Interview with Marc-Andre Leclerc
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Earlier this month, twenty-year-old Squamish local Marc-Andre Leclerc solo-climbed Squamish’s Chief three times in 17 hours: the historic Grand Wall route, topping out on the wall via Upper Black Dyke; the 1970 Burton-Sutton aid line, Uncle Ben’s; and the classic University Wall. What Leclerc found difficult was not the technical grade, the speed or the endurance required, but making the switch among three techniques: free soloing, roped soloing and ropeless aid.
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What the New NPS Wilderness Climbing Policy Means for Climbers and Bolting
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For decades, the future legality of fixed anchor use in Wilderness areas remained uncertain. Because land management agencies had no national guidance to assist local planners and managers, each local park and national forest was left to interpret the Wilderness Act–as it pertains to fixed anchors–on its own, and with wildly varying results. Last month the NPS issued Director’s Order #41 to finally clarify the agency’s management policy in Wilderness areas. Jason Keith of the Access Fund tells us what is means for climbers.
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Desperate Country: Seven Days on the Fence
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Over seven days, Jens Holsten and Chad Kellogg made their way across the toothy ridgeline of the Northern and Southern Pickets in the Cascade Mountains. The ten-mile linkup would be one of the longest routes in the Lower 48–had they completed it.
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2013 Everest Report: A Curse, a Fight and the Aftermath
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Modern Sherpa climbers have achieved some respect within the commercial guiding community–their status the result of evolving power structures through decades of Himalayan mountaineering. But as we look into the background of the April 27, 2013 outburst in Camp II on the south side of Everest, one discrepancy becomes apparent: the credit and wages Sherpas receive for their work, as compared to that of their Western colleagues, has not caught up to the ongoing risks Sherpas face or to their growing responsibilities.
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64 The View from the Wall
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76 Castles of Ice and Air
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Free Climbing Liberty Cap: A Q&A with Cedar Wright
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The Golden Age of climbing in Yosemite may have come and gone, but last week, Lucho Rivera and Cedar Wright proved there are still puzzles waiting to be unlocked by creative minds. I caught up with Wright between sips of coffee to hear more about what he calls “one of the best free climbs in Yosemite Valley.”
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Death on Yosemite’s Muir Wall
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Already through the three cruxes of the climb and just 600 feet from the top of El Capitan, Mason Robison did what we’ve all done before: pulled on a loose block. The rock fell, cutting Robison’s lead rope and sending him to his death. Chris Van Leuven eulogizes the 38-year-old stone mason, analyzes the accident and teaches us something about Yosemite Valley geology.
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Mesca-Dawn: A Remembrance of Bill Denz
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In a collaborative effort to profile the late Bill Denz for our spring issue, Peter Haan and Paul Maxim enlisted David “Zappa” Austin to record his memories of one hard-fought link-up of Mescalito and the Dawn Wall of El Capitan in 1978. A snippet of Austin’s story helps shape Denz’s tough and tenacious character in “Boldness, Genius Magic: The Life of Bill Denz,” Alpinist 42. Herein, Austin tells the rest of the unpublished story.
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42 The Torch & The Brotherhood
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55 Homage
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74 Boldness, Genius, Magic: The Life of Bill Denz
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84 Just Another Bear Story
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Obituary: Layton Kor (1938-2013)
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The name says it all. Everyone who is a climber has heard his name. Every climber has seen his name plastered all over the guidebooks and on route names like Kor’s Flake, Kor’s Door, Kor’s Korner and the Kor-Ingalls Route. Layton Kor was ubiquitous in the 1960s. The man was everywhere, stirring up an impatient storm on the rocks wherever he landed.
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In Gold Blood
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One year ago I sat idly and watched as my friends enjoyed a beautiful, warm winter day of cragging at the New River Gorge in West Virginia…. I reminisced of moments from weeks prior: the sound of our machete as it cut through thick vines; the unmistakable metallic squawk of the Bearded Bellbird; waterfalls; flowers; heaven on earth; black flies; dazzling views; big walls; dirt in my eyes; ant bites; the sound of a breaking bone…
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50 Years on Everest
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Each year, the Everest situation comes under greater scrutiny, with new stories of crowds and deaths and with new allegations of climbers lacking compassion for each other…. Each person’s choice of style is his or her own, a decision that has to do with highly personal variables. Regardless of how we feel about the use of various aids, the people who stand atop these peaks still take each step themselves.
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64 Journey into Night
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In October 2013, Ueli Steck astounded the international climbing community with a rapid solo on Annapurna’s South Face. But for him, the ascent was a kind of private, nocturnal pilgrimage, influenced by the recollection and example of departed heroes.
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Alpinist 41: The Cover (Back)story
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We were on the North Face of the Eiger. Clint Eastwood was dangling free over an ugly overhang with his rope attached to the end of a ladder that was rigged like a diving board. It protruded about 20 feet over the edge of a rock ledge….
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Future First Ascents: The Faces of the Mugs Stump Award
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We already introduced their objectives. Now meet the nine teams chasing those summits with all of Mug Stump’s boldness and commitment to light and clean alpinism.
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An Arctic Expedition Trilogy Perceived
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The continued search to discover and climb the northernmost rock formations on Earth in Franz Josef Land, Russia
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Golgotha and the Angel: Reveling in the Unclimbed
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Through spindrift and 70 mph winds, Clint Helander and Ben Trocki chase 45-year-old projects in the Revelation Mountains of Alaska.
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Four Climbers, K7, One Ogre
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