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Edges of Maps: The Mountain Stories of Kyle Dempster
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At the time of his disappearance on the Ogre II, Kyle Dempster was one of the most promising mountain storytellers of his generation. Alpinist editor-in-chief Katie Ives looks back at some of work, and wonders about the writer he might have become.
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Metrophobia: A Thirst for Adventure
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Doing a first ascent on a remote big wall was not enough for a team of three Swiss and two French men, who opted to sea kayak 170 kilometers with all their provisions just to reach the climb.
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Adamson, Dempster Remembered for Love, Tenacity
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Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson were at home in wild and remote mountains. But their sense of passion and commitment spread beyond the bold routes they climbed to the people with whom they shared their lives. On Alpinist.com, Derek Franz writes about the disappearance of the two men on the north face of the Ogre II. Friends of the two climbers remember their tenacity and love.
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In Memory of Kyle Dempster
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On September 3, 2016, the search for Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson, missing on the Ogre II in Pakistan, was called off. Here, a friend and climbing partner Scott Robertson writes a tribute to Kyle. We will be working on more stories about Kyle and Scott in the weeks ahead.
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Wind River Universe
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Dick Dorworth reflects on the changes that the last forty-five years have brought to the Wind River Range: “On a clear day, the surface of Lonesome Lake reflects the sweeping silver walls of the Cirque of Towers, a glacier-polished mirror to the climber who cares (dares?) to gaze into it and to take those visions back to the larger world.”
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Last Unclimbed Wind River
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Eminent chronicler of the Wind River Mountains Joe Kelsey searches for the “last Unclimbed Wind River” peak–a quest inspired by an episode with his climbing partner, Paul Horton, on an obscure and seemingly unvisited summit: “As Paul led toward a chimney on the final pitch, he let out an equivocal chuckle…. ‘What?’ ‘A piton.'”
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My Big Scary First Ascent
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Before she and Bev Johnson made the first female ascent of El Capitan, Sibylle Hechtel lead her first unclimbed big wall in the Wind Rivers: “Dick handed me our minimal gear, pointed, and said, “Just head up that corner until you get to a good ledge, and set up a belay.’ I gulped.”
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Tower I Ice Couloir, Mt. Helen
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Bill Lindberg and I are several pitches up a narrow couloir on the north side of Mt. Helen. A thick, even ribbon of white divides the tawny-grey granite walls that rise steeply above us on either side. The granular, late-season ice accepts the picks of our piolets and rigid crampon points perfectly. Thus far, the climb has been so straightforward that we might have rehearsed it ahead of time; we are both exhilarated to be moving rapidly on an unclimbed alpine line.” In 1971, two climbers put new alpine gear to the test on what was the first ascent of…
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Sticking Needles in the Haystack
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In 1969, at the age of 18, Jeff Lowe climbs “like a light-footed wolf” on Haystack Mountain.
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Extra Left Klettershoe
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After climbing classics every day,” Doug Robinson recalls, “it was easy to assume that the great lines had all been snatched up. Our steps turned homeward, with lingering views of the great Cirque vanishing over Warbonnet’s shoulder. One last wall, Sundance Pinnacle, hesitated our footfall.” In this essay, Robinson recalls his first, first ascent in 1966.
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Wyoming’s Range of Light
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Royal Robbins recounts a sojourn to the Winds in 1964: “Two things that you don’t usually find in the Sierra, but that you can expect in the Wind Rivers, are a thick population of mosquitoes and bad weather in the summer. Also, in certain areas you may encounter enormous herds of sheep.”
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Alpinist 55 Mountain Profile Essays | Wind River Range
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Read all seven essays by Royal Robbins, Doug Robinson, Jeff Lowe, Raymond G. Jacquot, Sibylle Hechtel, Joe Kelsey and Dick Dorworth from the Mountain Profile of the Wind River Range. –Ed.
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Typologies of Silence
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In “Typologies of Silence,” the Sharp End article for Alpinist 55, Editor-in-chief Katie Ives discusses some of the muted stories in accounts of early American mountaineering–as well as the efforts to create a more inclusive history today.
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Between the Earth and the Sky
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For our Climbing Life department in Alpinist 55, high school student Kai Lightner writes about his first multipitch traditional climb on Stone Mountain, with Yosemite pioneer Doug Robinson. For more, wide-ranging stories from our print magazine contributors, pick up a copy of Alpinist 55.
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Poetry Feature: Three Poems by David Wilson
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“Tell me again about being single-minded, / about couloirs bulging with fat blue ice / and dawn arriving high in the Alps; / how a slope exists at a perfect angle / where it all might kick in again.” Read three poems from David Wilson.
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Home: an Index
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“There is glacial power in language, in naming things. I am here because my mother gave me a vocabulary for motion,” poet Devi Lockwood writes about her experiences growing up as the daughter of a mountaineer–in this essay for Alpinist 55. Subscribe today or preorder at the Alpinist.com store.
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Local Hero: Clint Helander on Mark Westman
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Why Mark Westman should be famous (A postscript to Alpinist 19). May’s everlasting sun hovered in a low, lateral arc over the Alaska Range, bathing the massive peaks in fiery light. Waves of clouds washed up the Kahiltna Glacier and flooded the lower mountains in an ever-darkening fog.
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The Path
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It’s 3 a.m., July 2015. We walk through the darkness, headlamps illuminating our path. A cool breeze awakens the trees, and the creek bubbles to life as we switchback up the trail. Our movement becomes rhythmic. Three hours pass rapidly. Faint light paints the horizon, and the mountains are stirred awake…
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Glen Denny Remembers Valley Walls in the 1960s
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Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing and Living in Yosemite by Glen Denny. Published by Yosemite Conservancy, May 2016. 210 pages. Paperback. $18.95. During the 1960s, Glen Denny, a young college dropout and budding photographer, was part of the famous crew of riff-raff climbers who spent their days in Yosemite Valley, honing skills…
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Poetry Feature: “Kalymnos”
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This poem was inspired by climbing in Kalymnos for the first time a few years ago and thinking about that point in the day when you feel as if you’ve climbed out of your own skin.
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The Climbing Life: She Climbed Alone
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As a young climber in the 1990s, I developed a strange habit. Each year I found myself obsessively searching the American Alpine Club’s Accidents in North American Mountaineering for entries about women.
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The Climbing Life: The March of Folly
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“I’M SO GLAD TO SEE YOU BOYS,” Lee Sorenson shouted as he ran across the campsite toward us, his bearded face beaming with love and relief. His oldest son, Tobin, and I were a full day and a night overdue. It was March 1975, and we’d just made the second ascent of the Valley’s first major ice climb, Upper Sentinel Falls.
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Darwin’s Disappointment
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In September 1833, Charles Darwin set out for the four peaks of the Sierra de la Ventana alone, lured by local murmurs of caves and forests and veins of silver and gold. The small range was barely visible from the port of Bahia Blanca, a notch in the north-central Argentine coast. There, the H.M.S. Beagle remained docked with Captain Fitzroy, who had invited Darwin aboard the ship to circumnavigate the globe as a scientist.
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Solo Faces: The Camaraderie of Divine or Reckless Brotherhood
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Before I left for Chamonix to go hiking in the French Alps, I borrowed Solo Faces by James Salter from the lending library at work. My list of must-reads was long and only growing longer, but the ghostly mountain landscape of its cover caught my eye–a silhouetted man ascending a jagged peak.
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Down to the Wire
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This story is about Jack Tackle recovering from a debilitating sickness and then traveling to Mt. Augusta (14,072), Saint Elias Mountains, Yukon Territories. High on the peak’s north face, he was clocked by a rock, and rescued from the wall a few days later by Pararescue Specialists (known as parajumpers, or PJs), highly trained members of the Airforce Special Forces.
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Poetry Feature: “Belay”
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As an ecologist and a writer, I spend a lot of time contemplating how those two vocations speak to each other. Fundamentally, my research explores what it is to translate a landscape and how language shapes our perception of the ecosystems on which we depend.
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A History of Imaginary Mountains–Thoreau’s Dream: Beyond the Maps
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Behind the histories of exploration lie less-visible tales of rumored summits that prove to be nonexistent, and of physical mountains whose shapes and heights transform according to different legends.
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Friends and Family Honor Dave Bridges (1970-1999)
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On October 5, 1999, while Dave Bridges and Alex Lowe were investigating a potential ski descent on the southwest face of Shishapangma, an avalanche buried them. This spring, their remains were found on the mountain.
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A Quartet for Silent Lands: A Photo Essay
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We asked Lise Billon and Jerome Sullivan, two of the four authors of “A Quartet for Silent Lands” in Alpinist 53 (the other two authors are Diego Simari and Antoine Moineville) to share additional photos from their story for us to post online.
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Local Hero: Fay Pullen
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At seventy-three, Cascades climber Fay Pullen bushwhacks through dense thickets and climbs isolated peaks–generally alone. Cindy Beavon pays a visit to one of Washington’s most prolific soloists.
