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Latok I: Impossible Is Not Forever
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In this story that first appeared in Alpinist 64, Alexander Gukov shares his experience of surviving alone for a week at 6200 meters on Latok I (7145m) after his partner Sergey Glazunov fell to his death on the descent with most of their equipment. Gukov was ultimately rescued by a dramatic helicopter operation flown by Pakistani pilots Major Qazi Muhammad Mazhar-ud-Din, Major Abid Rafique, Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Anjum Rafique and Major Fakhar-e-Abbas. Prior to the accident, Gukov and Glazunov reached a historic high point on the legendary North Ridge, which has thwarted the previous four decades of attempts.
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Ride the Wind; Wind River Range, Wyoming
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In this On Belay story from Alpinist 63, Szu-ting Yi recounts an attempt she made with her husband Dave Anderson to traverse 100-plus miles of the Wind River Range while climbing all 43 of its peaks that rise along the Continental Divide (and that are named in 2015 USGS maps). What started as a whimsical project for Yi soon transformed into a deeper search for independence as a woman and a climber.
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“As Above, So Below” uses fiction to explore the realities of risk and relationships
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About four years ago, Chris Kalman found himself struggling with heavy emotions while living with his girlfriend and her father who was dying of cancer. Kalman started writing what became a 103-page novella titled “As Above, So Below.” The fictional story weighs on matters of death, grief, risk and family relationships.
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The Giri-Giri Boys
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Ten years ago, in May 2008, an unassuming group of five Japanese climbers who jokingly dubbed themselves the Giri-Giri Boys caught the world’s attention for their bold and visionary enchainments in the Alaska Range. This story by Katsutaka Yokoyama about that expedition originally appeared in Alpinist 26 (Spring 2009), simply titled “The Giri-Giri Boys.”
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Silences at Dawn
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In this Sharp End essay from Alpinist 63, Editor-in-Chief Katie Ives contemplates the varying meanings of awe as she delves into mountain darkness and solitude in search of peace.
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“Honouring High Places”: A Lifetime of Exploring “Unforgiving Terrain”
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“Honouring High Places”–the final book authored by Junko Tabei, who died in 2016 at age 77 and was the first woman to summit Chomolungma (Everest)–is now available and is a finalist for a Banff Book award. Alpinist Assistant Editor Katherine Indermaur writes of the book: “Though there are many lessons to take away from Tabei’s life, perhaps the most important is not just how and what she climbed, but also how and what she accomplished as a mountaineer when she wasn’t climbing….”
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An interview with Suman Dubey about his memories of the 1961 Indian expedition to Nanda Devi
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With Alpinist 63 and Part II of the Nanda Devi Mountain Profile now on newsstands, we bring you this interview with Suman Dubey, who became a member of the 1961 Indian expedition to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary in India’s Garhwal Himalaya when he was an undergraduate student in Delhi. Nanda Devi is a sacred peak significant to locals for embodying Hindu Goddess Nanda, and a difficult one for mountaineers due to its being surrounded by a ring of high peaks that make up the Sanctuary’s border.
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Out from the Shadows: Sexual Harassment and Assault in Climbing Communities
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From April 16 to July 4, in collaboration with other national climbing organizations and magazines, we undertook a survey on the topic of sexual harassment and assault in the climbing world. In this article we share some of the results.
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Safety Means More than a Good Belay
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American Alpine Club President Deanne Buck and Club CEO Phil Powers share their perspective as to why the results of a recent survey about sexual harassment and sexual assault within climbing communities should be taken seriously by everyone.
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Remembering Tim Auger
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Tim Auger died on August 9, 2018, in Banff, Alberta, at age 72. The following story is an excerpt from a feature by Brandon Pullan titled “Homage” that appeared in Alpinist 42. Auger was an influential Canadian climber who served Parks Canada for approximately three decades. One of his most famous first ascents was the University Wall on the Chief at Squamish with Dan Tate, Glenn Woodsworth and Hamish Mutch in 1965-66.
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A2: The Highest Mountain in the World (1819)
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In this Mountain Profile essay from Alpinist 62, Stewart Weaver documents the early mapping of Nanda Devi and the initial belief that it was the highest mountain in the world.
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A retrospective on the second winter ascent of Nanga Parbat, the heroic rescue and the logistical and financial challenges of helicopter operations in Pakistan
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Elisabeth Revol and Tomek Mackiewicz completed the second winter ascent of Nanga Parbat in alpine style on January 25, but they got into trouble on the descent as a storm was building. What unfolded over the next several days became a demonstration of heroism and solidarity in the international mountain community, as people from different nations worked together to try to help the stranded climbers. It also raised questions about modern rescues in remote mountains–about the limits of possibilities; about best practices in a digital and increasingly technological age; and about disparities between which groups of people receive the most…
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‘End of the Rope’: Courage and Humor on the Cliffs and on the Ground
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Jan Redford’s new memoir, “End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood,” takes the reader on her journey of rebelling against her family and society’s expectations, navigating relationships and loss on her own terms and pursuing the potential she knows she has despite obstacles. It’s the work of a vulnerable and hard-earned courage, open to trial and error on a climb as well as on the ground.
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Responsibility is a Gift: OR trade show provides a glimpse of outdoor industry’s impacts and influence
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As the Summer Outdoor Retailer trade show heats up in Denver, Emma Murray and Sara Aranda take a look back at the winter trade show that was held in January and some of the events since then to consider how the outdoor industry is addressing environmental, social and political issues.
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1939: The Eye of the Storm
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In this Mountain Profile essay from Alpinist 62, Julia Pulwicki translates Janusz Klarner’s account of the first ascent of Nanda Devi East in 1939 by Klarner’s Polish team. This essay is part of an extensive two-part feature by Pete Takeda that includes other essays by various authors as well as this one.
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Sentinels of the Alpine
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Katherine Indermaur considers her connection to alpine environments and the history represented by the lodgepole pine.
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To Look the Bear in the Eye; The Life of Yasushi Yamanoi
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In this story from Alpinist 62, Sartaj Ghuman chronicles the adventures of Yasushi Yamanoi. At 53 years old, Yamanoi has survived multiple epics in the mountains. He remains a talented climber despite lost fingers and toes, broken teeth and bones and other severe injuries. He is on the long list for the 2018 Piolets d’Or for a first ascent he did last year with Takaaki Furuhata of a 5970-meter peak in India’s Zanskar Range. Ghuman was their liaison officer and, after meeting Yamanoi, he wanted to write about the low-key man who has been making significant high-altitude first ascents for…
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Full Circle: how and why Sunny Stroeer became the first woman (and third person) to finish Aconcagua’s 360 Route in a solo push
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Sunny Stroeer became the first woman (and third person) to complete Aconcagua’s 360 Route in a solo push last February. For this story, Emma Murray asked Stroeer how she went from being a student who rarely ventured outside town–even when Stroeer lived in Switzerland’s “outdoor capital of the world”–to an ambitious outdoor athlete, and what motivates her to keep pushing her limits.
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A dusty box of golden memories: photos from the life of Kim Schmitz (1946-2016)
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Savannah Cummins befriended the legendary alpinist Kim Schmitz in recent years when they were living in Jackson, Wyoming. Schmitz gave Cummins a box of old photos shortly before he died in a one-car accident in September 2016 at age 70. Rick Ridgeway, John Roskelley and Jack Tackle assisted in identifying some of the images, and in honor of Kim’s memory, we share some of his collection with you now.
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Adventures on the Turtle’s Back
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In this story from Alpinist 62, “Adventures on the Turtle’s Back,” Joe Whittle, an enrolled tribal member of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma and a descendent of the Delaware Nation, spends time in canyons and mountains that Indigenous people call home. Kanim Moses-Conner, Bobby Fossek, Len Necefer, Mia Ritter-Whittle and Brosnan Spencer join him on a shared journey to connect with the land and their Native American heritage in the Wal’wa-maXs, Oregon.
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The Mountain of Data
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In this Sharp End story from Alpinist 62, Editor-in-Chief Katie Ives contextualizes some of the life and work of the great Himalayan chronicler Elizabeth Hawley, who died January 26, 2018, at age 94. During her lifetime, Hawley became an icon for her fact-checking and record-keeping, aspects of journalism that remain as important as ever today.
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A collection of letters
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Selected letters to the editor from Alpinist 59, 61 and 62.
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Under Pulse
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In this Off Belay story from Alpinist 61, Jerry Auld imagines a close encounter with the gears of a massive mechanical system lurching under the surface of a glacier. The tale was inspired by some of his glacier travel in which he once fell into a crevasse and from a 2013 ski circumnavigation of Mt. Logan in Canada’s Kluane National Park. He writes, “When you are in the palm of such a setting, it is hard to not feel the importance of keeping these environments working. I wanted to tell that story–to visualize a wounded Earth that is starting to…
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Tom Higgins (1944-2018) remembers the 1976 first ascent of a Pinnacles classic
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Tom Higgins, an influential climber and writer, passed at age 73 on March 21. In his memory, we present a story in which he recounts the 1976 first ascent of Shake and Bake, a classic three-pitch 5.10a R in Pinnacles National Park, California.
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The Mountain of Diamonds
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In this Sharp End story from Alpinist 61, Editor-in-Chief Katie Ives ponders the legend of the “mountain of diamonds” in nineteenth-century American history and the obsession with the idea of hidden riches: “How quickly visions of distant summits turn into longings for conquest, exploitation and gain. But if an imaginary peak is a creation of desire, its elusiveness might also hint at more insubstantial or transcendent things.”
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Pressure Lift
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In this story from Alpinist 61, Cole Taylor recounts his solo journey of sailing north along the Pacific coast from Washington, navigating miles of crevassed glaciers and pulling off the second ascent of the North Pillar of Devils Thumb (Taalkhunaxhk’u Shaa) with borrowed gear, 40 years after it was first done by Bob Plumb and Dave Stutzman.
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Marc-Andre Leclerc Remembered
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Brette Harrington, Luka Lindic, Sonnie Trotter, Bernadette McDonald, Tom Livingstone and others recount the impressive climbing career and profound life of beloved Canadian alpinist Marc-Andre Leclerc.
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A Short Stretch of Fred’s Road
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In this story from Alpinist 61, Douglas McCarty recalls his adventures on the road with Fred Beckey, which started in 1972 when McCarty and a friend hopped a freight train from Montana to Seattle, where the 17-year-olds subsequently met Beckey. Since then, McCarty joined the legendary mountaineer on trips to Alaska, China, Kenya, Mexico and Tanzania, with urban bivies at public parks in between.
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On Becoming a Mountain Steward
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In this unabridged version of a Climbing Life story from Alpinist 61, Laura Waterman retraces the path and climbs that inspired her to become involved in conservation work with her husband, Guy Waterman, in New England’s Presidential Range during the 1970s. Laura Waterman outlines the environmental challenges the area has faced in the past and now faces again in the form of a new hotel that is being proposed by the Cog Railway near the summit of Mt. Washington (Agiocochook).
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Remembering Ryan Johnson
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Clint Helander remembers the life and prolific climbing career of his friend Ryan Johnson, who went missing and is presumed dead along with Marc-Andre Leclerc after the pair climbed a new route on the north face of the Main Mendenhall Tower in Alaska in early March.
