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A screenshot of images from Instagram: #myalpinelesson, a hashtag launched to encourage climbers to share stories of their accidents and close calls to help others improve their risk management skills. [Images] Instagram, #myalpinelesson

Sharing Misadventures, not just Adventures: The Future of Climbing Accidentology

“The Future of Alpinism,” is the theme of Alpinist 75–which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, including this one by Maud Vanpoulle, titled “Sharing Misadventures, not just Adventures: The Future of Climbing Accidentology.” She writes: “Alpinists are often reluctant to talk about their own accidents. There can be a sense of guilt that haunts survivors or a reluctance to admit mistakes…. A change of attitude seems to be taking place at the heart of different mountain communities. Among other examples, social sciences researchers, in collaboration with the administrators of the French Web forum camptocamp.org, have established a debriefing system for ‘incidents and accidents’ that permits anonymous reporting and that encourages users to ‘participate in the construction of a collective knowledge base.'”

Aaron Mike before the couloir he skied on Dibee Nitsaa, Dinetah, with fellow Dine/Navajo mountaineer Len Necefer. [Photo] Isaiah Branch-Boyle

Sounds of Ceremony: The Future of Sacred Landscapes

“The Future of Alpinism,” is the theme of Alpinist 75–which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, including this one by Len Necefer, titled “Sounds of Ceremony: The Future of Sacred Landscapes.” He writes: “Alpinism has provided me with a means to grow deeper roots into my own personal identity and the long-standing bonds with mountains of my Navajo heritage…. Within cultures around the world, the existence of mountain landscapes serves as an intergenerational reminder of the sacred. In our shared future of climate change, we must all ensure that we steward mountain landscapes for the generations ahead–to keep intact the many ways they nourish ecosystems and societies, but also to preserve the varied connections that we each maintain with them.”

Mt. Khumbila, Khumbu, Nepal. [Photo] Un Sherpa

Mountain As Metaphor: A Future of Multiple Worldviews

“The Future of Alpinism,” is the theme of Alpinist 75–which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, including this one by Dr. Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, titled “Mountain As Metaphor: A Future of Multiple Worldviews.” She writes: “In the future, I hope alpinism is able to project multiple worldviews together at once–not as a competition to establish a hierarchy, but as a way to learn from each other and to treat everyone with dignity. I hope alpinism is not just about stepping on the mountain, but about strengthening our relationship with it and with each other….”

Koyo Zom (6877m), Hindu Raj range, Pakistan. [Photo] Tom Livingstone

Free and High: A Future of Cutting-Edge Alpinism

“The Future of Alpinism,” is the theme of Alpinist 75–which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, including this one by Tom Livingstone, titled “Free and High: A Future of Cutting-Edge Alpinism.”

Yangmaiyong (5958m), Sichuan, China. [Photo] Tamotsu Nakamura

The Cresset and the Light: The Many Futures of Alpinism

“The Future of Alpinism,” is the theme of Alpinist 75–which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, starting with the introduction by Editor-in-Chief Katie Ives, titled “The Cresset and the Light: The Many Futures of Alpinism.” She observes that “the story of the future of alpinism will not be one story, but many stories…reflecting a wide range of values, perspectives and experiences. It became impossible for me to read these essays without thinking about this collection as a letter to the future. Messages of fears and hopes”–not just about climbing by itself, but also about the broader world in which it takes place.

The route line for Jaume Peiro and Alex Gonzalez' Big Fighter (6c [5.11b/c] A2, 740m) on Chaupi Huanca. [Photo] Alex Gonzalez

Young Spanish team establishes Big Fighter, a 740-meter route on Chaupi Huanca, Peru

Between July 1 and 3, young Spanish climbers Jaume Peiro (20) and Alex Gonzalez (18) made the first ascent of the northwest spur of Chaupi Huanca in the Rurec Valley of the Cordillera Blanca in Peru. They climbed their 740-meter route–Big Fighter–at 6c (5.11b/c) A2, and estimated it would go free at 8a+ (5.13c). Peiro and Gonzalez succeeded on the line that two previous parties (an Argentinean team in 2016, and an Ecuadorian team in 2021) had previously attempted, adding 470 meters to the Ecuadorian team’s high point that was 270 meters up the wall.

Christoph Schranz on the approach to the Kolosseum wall of Hohe Mund in the Tyrolean Alps. [Photo] Johannes Mair / Alpsolut Pictures

Christoph Schranz establishes a 300-meter 8c (5.14b), ground up, in the Tyrolean Alps

On May 8, Christoph Schranz freed Ocha-Schau-Schuich (“Fear of Heights,” in his Tyrolean dialect). It took him 20 days of work spread out over three years to establish the 300-meter, seven-pitch route. He explored the route ground up, as a rope solo, starting in 2018 and then began efforts to free the line starting in 2020, investing 10 attempts with support from partners before succeeding on his 11th attempt this past May. Ocha-Schau-Schuich is protected with a mixture of widely spaced bolts and natural protection, with difficulties up to 8c (5.14b).

The Brenva Spur at night, Mont Blanc. [Photo] Tim Oliver

Running Waters

During the battles of World War I, British alpinist T. Graham Brown had vivid, recurring dreams of an alpine wall he’d first imagined after reading a route description in a climbing novel and trying to locate it on a map. Years later, Brown completed his famous routes on the real Brenva Face of Mont Blanc only to find, as he wrote in his memoir, that the vertical landscape of his fantasies still haunted him: “The dream and its country persist.” In this Sharp End story from Alpinist 75–which is now on newsstands and in our online store–Editor-in-Chief Katie Ives explores the topographies of inner mountains.

Barbed wire and mountains in Afghanistan: Koh-e-Omah (5766m), left, and Koh-e-Hawar (6266m). [Photo] Matt Traver

Women, girls involved with Ascend program in Afghanistan are threatened by Taliban rule

The members, graduates and students of the Ascend program in Afghanistan need help. The nonprofit has offered leadership training for young Afghan women through mountaineering courses, and now that Taliban forces have seized control over much of the country, including the nation’s capital city of Kabul, people who do not adhere to the Taliban’s strict laws–such as organizations like Ascend that empower women–may now be in mortal danger. This article contains links for people who wish to help.

Sunset from below Mt. Sill, after Vitaliy Musiyenko stopped early because of 30+ mph winds (Miwok, Mono/Monache, Shoshone and Paiute land). [Photo] Vitaliy Musiyenko

Vitaliy Musiyenko completes 32-mile Goliath Traverse in High Sierra

From August 2 to 10, Vitaliy Musiyenko made the first traverse of Goliath–a linkup of gargantuan proportions along the Sierra Crest, in California’s Sierra Nevada Range. Over the course of eight days Musiyenko covered approximately 32 miles of mostly technical terrain, 80,000 feet of elevation gain, and 60 summits above 13,000 feet, including eight Fourteeners. It may be the longest ridge traverse in the Western Hemisphere.