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Outdoor Retailer Summer Show: Diversity and Inclusion; Where the outdoor industry’s mega-convention does (and doesn’t) succeed
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Sara Aranda and Emma Murray attended Salt Lake City’s last Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Trade Show to journal the demonstrations and conversations about public lands as well as race and gender equality in the outdoor industry. Here is what they saw and heard.
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Shunyata
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In this On Belay feature for Alpinist 59, Indian Alpinist Karn Kowshik describes a journey of self-discovery during his time in the mountains of Spiti Valley, India, where he first dreamed of becoming a climber. After gaining experience in other ranges, he then returns to Spiti in search of unclimbed waterfall ice.
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The World as It is Not
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During the mid-twentieth century, an ardent conservationist and Cascades mountaineer planted a series of elaborate hoaxes in Summit magazine. He hoped to prod readers to see the mountains in fresh and unfamiliar ways–and to remember the value of wild lands. In this Sharp End from Alpinist 59, Editor-in-chief Katie Ives talks with some of the climbers involved in the story, as well as friends and family members, to learn more about the great imaginary mountains of Harvey Manning (1925-2006).
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Freedom Catalogue
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In this Climbing Life story from Alpinist 58, Spencer Gray tallies the amount of resources and human labor required to produce the gear that he used to enjoy a single excursion into the mountains. He explains: “I submit this catalogue as proof of something true of much of modern life: the social and environmental cost of reaching these out-of-reach places, and returning safely, is unsustainably high.”
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Refuge
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Early expeditions often combined the exploration of new heights with a search for rare botanical specimens. More than a century after both natural history and mountaineering fractured into subdisciplines, Associate Editor Paula Wright explores the impacts of climbing’s science gap and the need for a more unified focus on conservation in this Wired story from Alpinist 58.
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Conrad Anker’s commencement speech for the University of Utah addresses current and future challenges for humanity
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Renowned alpinist Conrad Anker delivered the University of Utah’s graduation commencement speech and received an honorary doctorate on May 3, 2017. This is a copy of his speech, which considers the current and future challenges faced by Earth’s citizens, and the responsibility we have to address these global problems.
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Less and Less Alone: Alex Honnold
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This profile of Alex Honnold first appeared in Alpinist 35 (Summer 2011). In this piece, Alex Lowther cover’s Honnold’s sudden rise to fame, from his childhood and the death of his father, to how he balances the demands of his professional climbing career with his personal priorities.
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In the Bear’s Lodge
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Many climbers observe the voluntary climbing ban at Bear Lodge (Devils Tower) during the month of June as their way to show respect for local Native American cultures. In this Climbing Life piece from Alpinist 57, Nick Mott speaks with Milo Yellowhair from the Oglala Lakota and Arvol Looking Horse, Chief of the Nakota, Dakota and Lakota, and others to learn more about their views on the history.
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Pulled Apart
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In this Full Value story from Alpinist 58, Rick Accomazzo tells the story of a mission he participated in as a member of Yosemite Search and Rescue in July 1975 that has haunted him ever since–its memory compounded by the loss of his friend and climbing partner Tobin Sorenson in 1980. Illustrations by Andreas Schmidt.
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Bree Loewen describes ‘a job for a human, not a hero’ in ‘Found: A Life in Mountain Rescue’
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Bree Loewen’s brilliant memoir, Found: A Life in Mountain Rescue, is a compelling tale of life and death, motherhood and wilderness, rescue and recovery–and a must-read for anyone who travels in the backcountry.
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Tommy Caldwell is honest and vulnerable in his autobiography ‘The Push’
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Tommy Caldwell’s autobiography, The Push, is as daring as his multitude of world-class climbing accomplishments, which range from 5.14 and 5.15 sport routes around the world, and towering free ascents on Yosemite’s El Capitan–including the first free ascent of the Dawn Wall (VI 5.14d) in January 2015 with Kevin Jorgeson–to the first completion of the Fitz Roy Traverse in Patagonia with Alex Honnold in 2014. Caldwell’s writing is honest and vulnerable, which makes his moments of triumph even more inspiring.
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Tea Song
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In this Climbing Life story from Alpinist 58, mountaineer Shirin Shabestari writes about her childhood in Iran, where her dad introduced her to snowy peaks that inspired the dreams she continues to follow.
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K’e yil yal tx’i: Saying Something
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In this Climbing Life story from Alpinist 58, Leslie Hsu Oh takes her kids climbing and observes them learning lessons that took her a lifetime to learn. After Oh lost her birth mother and brother to cancer, her adoptive mother had encouraged her to seek a sense of kinship in the mountains.
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A foray into the ‘Never-Never Land’ of Cordillera Sarmiento, Chile
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Last March Americans Whitney Clark, Jon Griffin and Tad McCrea ventured into a notoriously wet and seldom-visited coastal region of South America–Patagonia’s Cordillera Sarmiento–in hopes of climbing a peak called Alas de Angel Sur. The approach to their main objective proved too difficult to decipher in the time and weather that they had, but the team still managed to climb another peak by a route they dubbed Estoy Verde (M6 200m). Clark recounts their rain-soaked adventure.
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Riding the Storm on Torre Central, Patagonia
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Mayan Smith-Gobat returns to the Torres del Paine in Patagonia to attempt a complete free ascent of Riders on the Storm (VI 5.12d/5.13 A3, 1300m) on the Torre Central, which she came close to accomplishing with Ines Papert in 2016. This year the weather dashed all hopes for a complete ascent, but Smith-Gobat and Brette Harrington summoned all their reserves and went up the icy wall anyway. Here Smith-Gobat relates their journey inward, upward and downward.
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On Belay: A Thousand Days of Lapis Lazuli
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After ten years as a boulderer, Keita Kurakami attempts what some other local climbers called impossible: a new free route on the daunting 110-meter Moai Face of Mt. Mizugaki. When he succeeded in July of last year, it turned out to be the hardest multipitch trad climb in Japan at 5.14a R/X.
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Wired: Rethinking Mountain Gloom
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Dawn L. Hollis challenges the belief in academia that people did not care for mountains until they began climbing them at the end of the eighteenth century. Further, she studies why an institution such as the British Alpine Club would react so strongly against the premise that the love people have for mountains is nothing new.
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TOOL USERS: The Headlamp
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In this Tool Users story from Alpinist 57, Paula Wright shines a light on the evolution of the headlamp. Since some climbers were still carrying flashlights in their mouths as late as the early 1970s, it seems that we have only recently emerged into a more illuminated age.
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The Literature of Ascent
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“Literary mountain writing may now be giving way to the selfie,” Stephen Slemon writes in this essay. “But this shift towards the visual media may be opening new ground for the genre of mountaineering literature to change.” Slemon explores climbing’s ties to the written word and how the form of climbing narratives is evolving.
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Full Value: Degringolade
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In this Full Value story from Alpinist 56 Sibylle Hechtel recounts a pivotal moment in her climbing career–her first first-ascent, in Canada’s Bugaboos, 1973. She went on to become famous for the first all-female ascent of El Capitan with Beverly Johnson later that year, but her experience in the Bugs taught her “how to get up and back down” in the mountains.
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On Belay: Unattached
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In this On Belay article from Alpinist 57, Anna Pfaff describes her adventures as she becomes “unattached” from maps, expectations and conventions and learns to find her own way into some of the unknown realms beyond.
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Off Belay: Beyond Conquest
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In this excerpt from Alpinist 57 Mailee Hung explores artwork by Richard T. Walker that “casts unease on traditional aspirations” and helps us consider “how to describe the aesthetic experience of climbing beyond this inherited legacy” of alpinists as conquerors.
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Local Hero: Loulou Boulaz
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During the 1930s, one woman joined the race to climb the feared north faces of the Alps, venturing into terrain then believed to be reserved for only the boldest (and some claimed the most reckless) men. In this Local Hero from Alpinist 57, Sallie Greenwood looks back on the extraordinary, often-forgotten life of Swiss alpinist Louise “Loulou” Boulaz.
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2017: Ghunsa
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Local guide Dawa Sherpa describes what it’s like to live and work near the base of Jannu/Kumbhakarna–a mountain sacred to his culture.
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2007: Open
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Russian alpinist Sergey Kofanov recounts his 2007 encounter with the “cosmic cold” shoulder of Jannu, when he and Valery Babanov made the first ascent of the West Pillar in alpine style.
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Poetry Feature: Chip Brown
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In an Alpinist exclusive poetry feature, award-winning outdoor writer Chip Brown imagines the landscape of the Yukon within the sounds of the city, and in an interview he reflects on the connection between climbing and poetry.
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1976-2016: Jannu Remembrances
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The great Japanese mountaineer Naoe Sakashita looks back on the first complete ascent of the north face of Jannu / Kumbhakarna to the summit of the 7710-meter Himalayan peak, and on his friendship with teammate Nobu-yuki Ogawa.
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1975: New Zealand Expedition Jannu North Face
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In 1975 New Zealand climber Graeme Dingle joined an expedition to the legendary Wall of Shadows on Jannu / Kumbhakarna, a 7710-meter peak in Nepal. High on the mountain, he looked up at an immense ice formation that seemed about to collapse. “You can’t tell me those cliffs are safe,” he said. “This is as far as I’m going.”
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Alpinist 57 Mountain Profile Essays | Jannu
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Read all four essays by Graeme Dingle, Naoe Sakashita, Sergey Kofanov and Dawa Sherpa from our Mountain Profile of Jannu / Kumbhakarna in Alpinist 57–Spring 2017.
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Roland Pauligk (1938-2017): The man who changed climbing with his brass micronuts
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Ross Taylor grew up as a family friend of Roland Pauligk, the man who created the brass “RP” micronuts that revolutionized rock climbing in the 1970s and are still essential gear at many cliffs today. Taylor recounts an influential life well lived since Pauligk died of cancer January 22.
