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The Journey
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I’m believer in positive thinking. But in August I found myself wondering about the disconnect between believing in the bright side and giving it lip service. On a trip to the Lotus Flower Tower in Canada’s Cirque of the Unclimbables, Ian Altman and his multiple sclerosis showed me how unyielding persistence can bridge this gap.
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Nakamura: Steward of Unclimbed Peaks
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With the advent of GIS, satellite images and other advanced cartographic applications, it seems the world is growing smaller by the minute. But long-time Alpinist contributor Tamotsu Nakamura–though he began his explorations after the Golden Age of Mountaineering ended–begs to differ.
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Remembering Cesarino Fava
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Alpinist remembers Cesarino Fava, who died on April 22, 2008 in Male, Italy. Share your thoughts and photos of Fava, whose greatest love were the peaks of Argentine and Chilean Patagonia.
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Inspirations, Part VI: Marko Prezelj
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Marko Prezelj shares his inspiration: Pot (The Way). “My ‘way’ has changed over time, but Zaplotnik’s foundations remain and continue to inspire.”
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Inspirations, Part V: The Wisdom of Exploration
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Damien Gildea shares his inspirations. “Repeats were given a line or two at most. Details were scarce, photos grainy—but how much help do you want? That approach, including only the essential and knowing what to leave out, reflected one of the basic tenets of alpinism. And all without the narrow-minded, style-as-dogma hectoring we get now from wannabe alpine prophets.”
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130 Kilometers an Hour in the Wrong Lane
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Smuggling climbing hardware onto planes, destroying rental cars, and climbing excellent limestone routes–the second part of an adventure series on Spain by photographer and writer Traveler Taj Terpening.
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Inspirations, Part IV: High Conquest
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Royal Robbins shares his inspiration: High Conquest. “It’s basically a history of mountaineering, but its most salient point is that the ‘high conquest’ of the title is not truly getting to the top of the highest peaks; it’s the conquest of those weak and timid parts of ourselves we don’t want running the show.”
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South Georgia: A Photo Essay
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Follow French alpinists through poor weather, unexpected obstacles, rough seas and defensive sea lion colonies on their crossing of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic.
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Chile: The Crusade for Virgin Rock
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“Long periods of high pressure, steep granite, moderate glaciers, ‘short’ approaches from base camp and 500-meter virgin walls seemed the norm in Brujo del Torres. The more research we did, the more we convinced ourselves we had found El Dorado…”
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High Crimes, Chapter 11
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The following story–an excerpt from the recently released nonfiction novel High Crimes–reveals the dark underbelly of high-altitude mountaineering: the loss of valuables, the loss of life.
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In Memoriam: Paul Dedi
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Remembering Alpinist’s most acclaimed artist–Paul Dedi–the rare personality whose enthusiastic, witty, scrappy outlook instituted him as an offbeat bastion of the climbing and illustrating communities.
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Cochamo: Into the Forest
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“So far we had little luck finding any climbing in Chile. But in a pension in Pucon there was a small photo on the wall showing a distant view of some interesting-looking cliffs, on a mountaintop above some woods. Our interest was roused immediately when, by chance, a local raft guide commented that no one had climbed on these walls, some of which rose 2,500 feet above the canopy.”
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Obsession and Ingenuity, Part IV: Kansas
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“We live in Lawrence, Kansas, my friend, a small college town lost in a sea of plains. If by local crag you mean a two-hour drive to some crumbling, dripping limestone in Missouri, then sure, that’s our local crag.”
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Remembering Sir Edmund Hillary
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Forty Kiwi mountaineers raised their axes as one to form the New Zealand Alpine Club’s honor guard when Sir Edmund Hillary’s coffin emerged…
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Inspirations, Part III: Gervasutti’s Climbs
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Simon Richardson shares his inspiration: Giusto Gervasutti. “As a teenager, consumed by a newfound passion for mountaineering, I had a voracious appetite for climbing books. I read my way through the school library and then the local town library, seeking out more adventures and experiences on the written page, so that I could gauge my own faltering beginnings in the sport.”
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Inspirations, Part II: High Alaska
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Kelly Cordes and Masatoshi Kuriaki share their inspiration. “High Alaska, the classic from Jonathan Waterman, started it all for me. But different writings have influenced me in different ways at different times. For me, influence has come from photos, words and people.”
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The 2008 Alpinist Film Festival
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Four nights. Twenty-two films. Eight premieres. One Grand Prize winner. $7,000+ raised for Surf Aid International. One bag of trash.
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Ouray 2008: A Video Story
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There are over a hundred lines in the Ouray Ice Park, but–if you’re actually looking to climb–any veteran’s recommendation is: “Wake up at 6 a.m., claim a line, and lap it all day. Best of luck.” Yet competition morning, January 12th, was different, if only for a few minutes.
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Soloing the Diamond: A Photo Essay
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“It may sound strange, but it was as though a period of my life was ending this spring. At first I was grieving for the past and very lost, but eventually I had to learn how to let go, and I entered a new life.”
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Inspirations, Part I: Vince Anderson
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We asked fellow alpinists to reflect on literature that most inspires their climbing. Vince Anderson and Mark Twight share the darkness in this first installment.
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Little Mother Up the Morderberg
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“I don’t find the solemn joy in fussing you do. The old-style mountaineers went up with alpenstocks and ladders and light hearts. That’s my idea of mountaineering.”
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Interview: Mike Robertson on His Eiffel Tower Protest Solo
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There are a multitude of reasons we climb–more often than not they are expressed in pithy, sound-bite phrases like Mallory’s “Because it’s there.” Within, Mike Robertson offers a reason more satisfying.
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Destination: Croatia
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When contemplating a climbing trip from a US mountain town, several important factors come to mind: blue–even turquoise–water, cultural experiences and a European location where the dollar isn’t drowned by the Euro.
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Bozeman Ice Festival: Accounts from the Players
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The Montana ice climbing community is prolific in both climbing and writing. This week, Bozeman Ice Festival participants and organizers share their tales.
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Obsession and Ingenuity, Part III: Farming Ice in Farm Country
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“Hey Jim, how would you feel about icing those things up and letting us climb on them?”
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Exfoliation Evolution
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Rarely does the ephemeral feel of ice climbing extend into the realm of granite slab climbing. But when it does, an evolution can happen.
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Early Season Canadian Rockies Route Explosion by Swiss Team
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Ueli Steck shares stories and photographs from his October tour of the Canadian Rockies, where he established committing new lines with Simon Anthamatten.
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Ice and Access in the Hyalite Canyon
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Joe Josephson, Montana’s most vocal ice proponent and author of Winter Dance, speaks about the precarious access to Hyalite Canyon: “Often in life, you don’t realize how good you have it until it’s gone–or at least under the threat of being taken away.”
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Three Women, a Mountain and a Mosque
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Three women tackle a new 950-meter free rock line in the Karakorum, where they discover that friendship and solidarity are the keys to success and survival.
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Obsession and Ingenuity, Part II: The Old Man and the Ice Tower
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The fixtures of Silver Gulch–a bar and microbrewery in Fox, Alaska–had something to talk about: an 152-foot ice blob rising out of the flattest part of Alaska. What they didn’t know: The Ghost Raven Ice Tower was a proving ground for the precocious.
