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Emile Rey, Katharine Richardson and J.B. Bich at the foot of the statue of Horace Benedict de Saussure and Jacques Balmat, Chamonix, France, 1890. [Photo] Courtesy of the Alpine Club

Through the Telescope

In this Mountain Profile essay from Alpinist 60, Associate Editor Paula Wright tells the story of a lasting partnership between two leading female alpinists and their adventures on la Meije in the late 1800s.

The south face of Nuptse with the new route marked by the thin red line. [Photo] Courtesy of Helias Millerioux, Benjamin Guigonnet, Frederic Degoulet

French team completes new route on Nuptse’s south face

On October 14-21, Helias Millerioux, Benjamin Guigonnet, Frederic Degoulet completed a risky new route on Nuptse’s south face in mostly alpine style, fixing only two short sections. The overall technical difficulty of their as-yet-unnamed route weighs in at M5+ WI6, 65° snow, 2342 meters. For Millerioux and Guigonnet, this was their second attempt on this route after trying it in 2015.

[Photo] Jonathan Byers

#AlpinistCommunityProject Flashback: Quinn Brett

From August 6-12, 2017, Quinn Brett shared some stories and photos for the #alpinistcommunityproject about some climbing adventures and places that were formative in her career. Based out of Estes Park, Colorado, Quinn is a climbing ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park and has become known for her big-wall speed and free climbs in Zion and Yosemite in recent years. On October 11, she slipped during a speed ascent of the Nose with Josie McKee and fell 100 feet onto a ledge. She was air-lifted to safety and has been in the hospital ever since, and has yet to regain the full use of her legs. A donation page has been set up under her name at YouCaring.com to help cover the extensive medical bills.

[Illustration] Jeremy Collins

Cartography of Prayers: Pemako

In this story that first appeared in Alpinist 54 as part of a series titled “A History of Imaginary Mountains,” Harish Kapadia recalls a journey inward while visiting a mystical Himalayan land known as Pemako. Kapadia, 72, received the 2017 Piolets d’Or-Asia Lifetime Achievement Award on November 3 in Seoul, Korea. He is the first Indian to receive the recognition.

From left: Savannah Cummins, Anna Pfaff and Lindsay Fixmer. [Photo] Lindsay Fixmer

Women’s expedition explores new routes in India’s Zanskar Range

Anna Pfaff reports on her expedition to northern India’s Zanskar Range with Savannah Cummins and Lindsay Fixmer at the end of August. The team only saw five days with feasible climbing conditions and 19 days of rain, snow, hail and wind, but they still managed to complete one first ascent and reached high ground on two other routes that they attempted on different peaks.

The Arjuna Group seen from the southwest. (1) Polish route (Barszczewski-Dasal-Skierski, 1983) up the central pillar of the west face. (2) All or Nothing (Cesen-Novak-Prezelj, 2017). Both the 1983 and 2017 routes lead to the main summit. (3) The west face of the south summit (Bender-Piasecki, 1983). This summit was first climbed by Poles in 1981 (Bartos-Otreba-Puzyrewski) up the broad couloir to the right of the west face and then the southeast ridge (approximately the right skyline) to the summit. [Photo] Marko Prezelj

Slovenians establish two new routes in the Kishtwar Himalaya

In this guest feature from the American Alpine Journal, Urban Novak reports on two new routes that he established with Marko Prezelj and Ales Cesen this past June. They acclimatized with a Grade ‘D’ route on Peak 6013, and then got lucky with a weather window that allowed them to complete their main objective, the west face of Arjuna (ca. 6250m). They named their route All or Nothing (ED+ M7+ WI5+ A0).

Fred Beckey at a previous American Alpine Club event. Beckey passed away October 30 at age 94. [Photo] Jim Aikman

Registration open for American Alpine Club’s Annual Benefit Dinner

Tickets are now available for the American Alpine Club’s annual benefit dinner weekend on February 23-24 in Boston, Massachusetts. This year’s event will honor the 40th anniversary of the first American ascent of K2. Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner–an Austrian who became the first woman to summit all 14 8000-meter peaks without bottled oxygen or high-altitude porters when she summited K2 in 2011–is the keynote speaker.

Paul Ramsden descends the east ridge of Nyainqentanglha Southeast (7046m) in Tibet after completing the first ascent of the peak via the North Buttress with Nick Bullock in 2016. [Photo] Nick Bullock

Threshold Shift

Nick Bullock recounts his first ascent of the North Buttress of Nyainqentanglha Southeast in Tibet with Paul Ramsden in 2016, and his subsequent return from Tibet to England to help his aging father. Back home, Bullock confronts the death of his mother, the loss of climbing friends and the uncertainties of Brexit. This story first appeared in Alpinist 57 and was recently named the best Mountaineering Article of the year at the Banff Mountain Book Festival.