At 11 am on January 24, Rolando Garibotti and Colin Haley stood on the summit of Cerro Torre after linking all four of the Torre Group’s iconic spires in a single, alpine style traverse…After they’d completed the traverse, for many people, the story that emerged was less of a retrospective into the project than it was a look toward the future.
I’m believer in positive thinking. But in August I found myself wondering about the disconnect between believing in the bright side and giving it lip service. On a trip to the Lotus Flower Tower in Canada’s Cirque of the Unclimbables, Ian Altman and his multiple sclerosis showed me how unyielding persistence can bridge this gap.
With the advent of GIS, satellite images and other advanced cartographic applications, it seems the world is growing smaller by the minute. But long-time Alpinist contributor Tamotsu Nakamura–though he began his explorations after the Golden Age of Mountaineering ended–begs to differ.
Alpinist remembers Cesarino Fava, who died on April 22, 2008 in Male, Italy. Share your thoughts and photos of Fava, whose greatest love were the peaks of Argentine and Chilean Patagonia.
Marko Prezelj shares his inspiration: Pot (The Way). “My ‘way’ has changed over time, but Zaplotnik’s foundations remain and continue to inspire.”
Damien Gildea shares his inspirations. “Repeats were given a line or two at most. Details were scarce, photos grainy—but how much help do you want? That approach, including only the essential and knowing what to leave out, reflected one of the basic tenets of alpinism. And all without the narrow-minded, style-as-dogma hectoring we get now from wannabe alpine prophets.”
Smuggling climbing hardware onto planes, destroying rental cars, and climbing excellent limestone routes–the second part of an adventure series on Spain by photographer and writer Traveler Taj Terpening.
Royal Robbins shares his inspiration: High Conquest. “It’s basically a history of mountaineering, but its most salient point is that the ‘high conquest’ of the title is not truly getting to the top of the highest peaks; it’s the conquest of those weak and timid parts of ourselves we don’t want running the show.”
Follow French alpinists through poor weather, unexpected obstacles, rough seas and defensive sea lion colonies on their crossing of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic.
“Long periods of high pressure, steep granite, moderate glaciers, ‘short’ approaches from base camp and 500-meter virgin walls seemed the norm in Brujo del Torres. The more research we did, the more we convinced ourselves we had found El Dorado…”
