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Diary of Yosemite’s Climber Stewards: On Patrol
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Up to 3,000-foot vertical walls, 5,000 routes, 1,200 square miles, 150-180 days of climbing per year and two (count them) two full-time Yosemite climbing rangers. In this installment of the Diary of Yosemite’s Climber Stewards, Climbing Ranger Ben Doyle gets paid to climb El Cap in a day.
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2012 Bozeman Ice Festival Livestream
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You don’t have to be in Bozeman to see the ice tower competition and talks by Hayden and Michael Kennedy, Doug Chabot and others at the Ice Fest! Find the live footage here.
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Dirtbaggery, Vol. 3: Surviving Thanksgiving Small Talk
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When we meet people for the first time, we ask their name, and we ask them their job. And although I know climbers who’ve adopted unorthodox monikers such as Trout Man, Chongo, Coach or Alf, they have no trouble answering their names. The job category, that one’s often tougher. If you’re like me, you put on a sheepish grin and give a halfway-there explanation, and struggle until failure to explain what you’re doing with yourself and why.
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Bozeman Ice Fest Writing Contest
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Does the sound of crunching leaves underfoot and a biting frost on your morning run have you itchin’ to break out the pointy hardware and sniff out some vertical ice? Nostalgic for your first time swinging a tool? Eager to enjoy some meditation time on your front points? Tell us about it.
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Dirtbaggery, Vol. 2: Saving Time, Wasting Time and Explaining Climbing on the Internet
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As a beginning climber, I would read Internet forums and climbing blogs for hours. I justified these pupil-glazing sessions as “research” into a world I knew nothing about….In the interest of helping others avoid such hours fraught with peril, I’m going to attempt to answer nearly every Internet climbing conundrum in the span of a single Q and A session.
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Ueber Steigeisentechnik- Crampon Manufacturing in 1908
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What the ice climbers of the future will be able to climb, I know not. But I find it hard to believe that we have already reached the limits of what is possible. — Oscar Eckenstein, 1908
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The Lho La Tragedy: Beginning of the End
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In 1989 an avalanche struck six Polish climbers descending from the West Ridge of Everest. Bernadette McDonald and Jerzy Porebski recount the disaster that ended the Golden Age of Polish Himalayan Climbing and the rescue that saved one man’s life. With illustrations by Ewa Labaj.
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El Capitan: The Movie
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Joe Iurato’s Little Climbers
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I’m trying to think of the best way to explain it. I got laid off in 2008 and fell back on my art pretty hard. It picked me up. In a sense I found myself falling out of climbing and I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was because of everything that had gone on.
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Dirtbaggery, Vol. 1: Just Seam Grip It
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Just Seam Grip It! – The art, and adhesive, of gear improvement.
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Diary of a Yosemite Climbing Steward
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Squamish Gondola Project Receives Initial Approval
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The mecca of Canadian granite, the Stawamus Chief in Squamish, British Columbia may soon see a new development. The Sea to Sky Gondola Corporation is the central proponent of a new project which aims to build a gondola to ferry passengers from the base of Shannon Falls by the Chief parking lot to the top of a ridge leading to the summit of nearby Mount Habrich. With a projected construction cost in the region of $20 million (CAD), the rides will cost approximately $29 a head.
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The Ice Warriors
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First my aim was to reach people who do not know much about mountaineering. Especially those people who would probably never read a thick book about it. If I am successful with this then I hope they would find some interesting information about climbing, winter climbing, the history of mountaineering and also about Polish achievements in climbing.
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Dukkha on Funeral For a Friend
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Birth is Dukkha, aging is Dukkha, death is Dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are Dukkha; association with the unbeloved is Dukkha; separation from the loved is Dukkha; not getting what is wanted is Dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are Dukkha.
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Elbrus
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The social climate of the Caucasus was rocked politically and economically by these measures. “The area is still dangerous may be even more than before…due to the year-long economic blockade, the local people became more desperate and chance of being robbed or killed for the reason of robbery is very obvious,” writes Alex Trubachev, a guide based in Moscow whose company has halted their Elbrus tours. “Locals have lost everything–two seasons of nothing,” agrees Myasnikov.
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36 K2 Mountain Profile: Part II (1974-2012)
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70 The City and the Blade
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Cerro Torre Roundup
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Since Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk climbed a “fair means” variation to the Compressor Route and then removed the bolts from its upper pitches the international climbing community has been awash in discussions of climbing ethics and etiquette. In what will most likely be Alpinist.com’s final post on this story we have gathered a collection of links to various Op-Ed’s, blog posts, threads and Letters to the Editor here. We will continue to update this page with new links rather than creating new NewsWires should this story continue to develop. – Keese Lane, Online Editor
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2012 American Alpine Club Benefit Dinner
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Abruzzi was a duke. Cassin was a steel worker. Perry-Smith came from family money. Heckmair was a gardener. The climbing community has always spanned the gap between those with the independent wealth to travel and climb, and those who have forsaken everything else for the mountains. I cannot claim to be as destitute as Heckmair or as dedicated as Cassin, but I always felt some jealousy for my partners’ racks of shiny new cams and wiregates. My gear came off the consignment rack of the local gear exchange. The AAC Benefit Dinner was the territory of the higher end leisure…
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Exploring The Alps
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It is more intuitive to pursue “the new” in remote and unexplored mountains, as opposed to a well-known range. “It is often difficult to be alone in the Alps,” Barmasse writes, citing the proliferation of guided climbing, staffed huts and ski lifts that bring vacationers to nearly all peaks. Barmasse wanted to experience the “authentic alpinism” that he found in distant mountains to his own backyard range. He wanted to try to keep the spirit of adventure alive, even in familiar and well-trodden territory. “These ancient and maybe old fashioned mountains, if explored from a new perspective, could be a…
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Grosvenor Sees Third Ascent
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First light revealed our next challenge; an eight-inch strip of ice transecting the rock band above. We packed up, and I started climbing. A few delicate tool placements and some dry tooling allowed access to the more moderate slope above. Shortly after Jeff began to simulclimb with me, I found myself at another intimidating challenge, another section of vertical, rotten “snice.” I did my best to not pull the pitch down on myself and, fortunately, was able to place a cam halfway up.
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38 K2:The Mountaineer’s Mountain, Part One
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Book Review: Remote Exposure – A Guide to Hiking and Climbing Photography
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Nautical Series: Skip Novak
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“I still view my first Whitbred Round The World race in 1977 as my most memorable sailing achievement. I was going out into the unknown. We were out of touch the whole time. Radios didn’t work and we had no GPS; I was navigating with a sexton. I just disappeared after the start, and arrived thirty days later in New Zealand.”
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Nautical Series: Greg Landreth and Keri Pashuk
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“[T]here is a lot of common ground (between sailing and climbing)… When you’re climbing, the general rhythm is that you have an anchor, a rest and then you scurry to the next spot to put your anchor in. And do it all over again. With sailing, you just stretch out the time scale by some years (and the expense by quite a number of zeros after the comma).
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Nautical Series: Bob Shepton
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In 2010, Scottish skipper/ex-priest Bob Shepton “lured” Belgians Nicolas Favresse, Olivier Favresse, Sean Villanueva and American Ben Ditto to the coast of Greenland with photos of a virgin wall, whose location he refused to disclose until they hired him to take them there. The climbers put up several new big-wall routes, using Shepton’s sailboat–Dodo’s Delight–as their floating base camp.
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Serkhe Khollu, Bolivia: A New Line on Crutches
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A rope length away from the summit of Ala Izquierda in Bolivia, Isabel Suppe was pulled from her perch on the summit ridge and tumbled 400m. She and her partner spent the following two nights in the open, trying to crawl back to camp. Her partner died of hypothermia during the second night, and she was rescued the next day. One year later, Isabel hobbled to the base of Serkhe Khollu on crutches, and put up a new line on the southwest face of this 5546-meter peak.
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Before and After
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Two videos show how a day in the life of Renan Ozturk changed (and didn’t change) after a near-fatal accident.
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Cratering in Newfoundland
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Still gripping his axe, Eliot hung over the water. We pulled him back from being crushed. He didn’t whine, whimper or scream out; there was no indication of his pain besides the funny way he rolled his next cigarette.
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Chad’s Ennedi Dessert: A Google Earth Adventure
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They began by traveling the only paved road in the country–and then driving 700 kilometers farther.