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A view of Cerro Trono from the east side of the Cordillera Sarmiento. [Photo] Whitney Clark

A foray into the ‘Never-Never Land’ of Cordillera Sarmiento, Chile

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.

Brette Harrington leads an offwidth choked with ice and sugar snow in the vicinity of Pitch 9 on Riders on the Storm (VI 5.12d/5.13 A3, 1300m), Torre Central, Torres del Paine, Patagonia. She used a variety of tricks to make progress, including aid moves off her ice axes. [Photo] Drew Smith

Riding the Storm on Torre Central, Patagonia

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.

Mt. Mizugaki (2230m), one of the peaks featured in Kyya Fukada's 1964 classic, One Hundred Mountains of Japan, translated in 2014 by Martin Hood. "Can one describe this mountain as a medley of crags?" Fukada wrote. "It is not the only mountain with crags, but what is unique about Mizugaki is the way it mixes its crags with its trees." [Photo] Satoru Hagihara

On Belay: A Thousand Days of Lapis Lazuli

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.

Christ Healing the Blind, painted ca. 1657. Dawn L. Hollis observes: The image depicts the healing of two blind men recounted in Matthew 20:29-34. Their first sight will be of the mountainous vista that dominates the canvas. [Image] Philippe de Champaigne

Wired: Rethinking Mountain Gloom

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.

A Berec headlamp used by Martin Mushkin from the mid-1950s until 1980. [Photo] Michelle Hoffman

TOOL USERS: The Headlamp

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.

A climber's bookcase. [Photo] Derek Franz

The Literature of Ascent

“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.

[Illustration] Andreas Schmidt

Full Value: Degringolade

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.

Lungaretse (5870m). [Photo] Camilo Lopez

On Belay: Unattached

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.

[Image] Richard T. Walker. the fallibility of intent #1, 2015; cut-out archival pigment print; 32 x 48 in. Walker's work teeters between the humorous and melancholic, juxtaposing the sublime with what it means to be imperfect and ultimately human, wrote Amy Owen in a California Gatehouse Gallery brochure. Courtesy, Richard T. Walker

Off Belay: Beyond Conquest

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.

Loulou Boulaz. In the 1930s, Boulaz was “the only woman in the race for the big north faces,” historian Rainer Rettner writes. “She was met with a lot of distrust by men.” [Photo] Sallie Greenwood

Local Hero: Loulou Boulaz

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.