-
Book Review: Simon McCartney’s ‘The Bond’
|
Rick Accomazzo reviews Simon McCartney’s book, The Bond. Published earlier this year, The Bond received the 2016 Banff Mountain and Wilderness Literature Non-Fiction Award, as well as the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature.
-
The Vision of Andrew Boyd
|
Drew Copeland considers how Andrew Boyd has quietly influenced the Squamish climbing scene in the last twenty years with his bold first free ascents and visionary lines.
-
The Shining Mountains
|
Popular books recount the early days of Canadian mountaineering as a story of epic discoveries. In this story from Alpinist 50, historians Zac Robinson and Stephen Slemon examine what often gets left out: the extent to which the “explorers” relied on the prior geographic knowledge of Indigenous guides.
-
Buffalo Soldiers in the Cavalryman’s Paradise
|
Yosemite National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson explores “the pitch of the wild” for the Buffalo Soldiers on patrol in Yosemite at the turn of the twentieth century.
-
Lauret Savoy’s Trace: Exploring Landscapes of Exclusion and Inclusion in American History
|
Alpinist Editor-in-chief Katie Ives describes some of the reasons Lauret Savoy’s 2015 book, Trace: Memory, History, Race and the American Landscape has become deeply relevant today: “Much of prior mountain literature, all too often, has been solipsistic and exclusionary. More than ever, we need writers like Lauret Savoy, who can help us see our shared land for it has been, what it is, and the many possible futures of what it can be. In a world in which so much seems starkly uncertain, there are much greater risks to all peoples than the individual and self-chosen ones that climbers face.…
-
A Backyard Big Wall Expedition
|
A group of Idaho climbers venture into the Canadian wilderness to complete the first ascent of a route on Wall Tower (9,560′) that was abandoned by Fred Beckey Carl Dietrich and Bill Ruch. They called their line The White Tiger (VI 5.11 A3, 1,600′).
-
The Glaciers Are Retreating: Southern Alps, New Zealand
|
In a story from Alpinist 38 (Spring 2012), Paul Hersey explores a landscape at the edge of loss on the fleeting ice fields of New Zealand’s Westland Tai Poutini National Park.
-
Local Hero: Stephen Shobe
|
James Edward Mills writes about one of his climbing heroes, Stephen Shobe, a mountain guide and member of Expedition Denali, a group that continues to promote diversity in outdoor education.
-
Seeking Space – The Climbing Life
|
An unexpected encounter on a hillside in New Mexico leads Jane Jackson to reconsider the environmental impacts of climbers and the conservation of public lands.
-
Local Hero: Hanniah Tariq
|
Vanessa Beucher writes about Pakistani activist Hanniah Tariq, founder of High Altitude Sustainability Pakistan, an organization dedicated to the well-being of expedition workers, their families and the mountain environment.
-
Off Route and Out of Time – The Sharp End, Alpinist 56
|
Back in April 2016, Canadian alpinist Marc-Andre Leclerc described his solo of the Emperor Face of Mt. Robson: “My thoughts had reached a depth and clarity that I had never before experienced. The magic was real…. I was deeply content that I had not carried a watch with me to keep time…. I felt more at peace than I would have had I been counting my rate of kilometers per hour.” In the Editor’s Note for Alpinist 56, Katie Ives looks at the complex relationship that has long existed between evolving visions of mountaineering and the measurement of space and…
-
An interview with Alex Megos about the cross-disciplines of sport vs. trad climbing
|
Climbing phenom Alex Megos considers himself a “sport climber,” but that self-designation didn’t stop him from racking up to flash The Path, a 5.14 R trad route in Canada. Chris Kalman asks Megos what he thinks about the emphasis climbers put on various definitions of ascent, such as bouldering, sport climbing and trad climbing.
-
Edges of Maps: The Mountain Stories of Kyle Dempster
|
At the time of his disappearance on the Ogre II, Kyle Dempster was one of the most promising mountain storytellers of his generation. Alpinist editor-in-chief Katie Ives looks back at some of work, and wonders about the writer he might have become.
-
Metrophobia: A Thirst for Adventure
|
Doing a first ascent on a remote big wall was not enough for a team of three Swiss and two French men, who opted to sea kayak 170 kilometers with all their provisions just to reach the climb.
-
Adamson, Dempster Remembered for Love, Tenacity
|
Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson were at home in wild and remote mountains. But their sense of passion and commitment spread beyond the bold routes they climbed to the people with whom they shared their lives. On Alpinist.com, Derek Franz writes about the disappearance of the two men on the north face of the Ogre II. Friends of the two climbers remember their tenacity and love.
-
In Memory of Kyle Dempster
|
On September 3, 2016, the search for Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson, missing on the Ogre II in Pakistan, was called off. Here, a friend and climbing partner Scott Robertson writes a tribute to Kyle. We will be working on more stories about Kyle and Scott in the weeks ahead.
-
Wind River Universe
|
Dick Dorworth reflects on the changes that the last forty-five years have brought to the Wind River Range: “On a clear day, the surface of Lonesome Lake reflects the sweeping silver walls of the Cirque of Towers, a glacier-polished mirror to the climber who cares (dares?) to gaze into it and to take those visions back to the larger world.”
-
Last Unclimbed Wind River
|
Eminent chronicler of the Wind River Mountains Joe Kelsey searches for the “last Unclimbed Wind River” peak–a quest inspired by an episode with his climbing partner, Paul Horton, on an obscure and seemingly unvisited summit: “As Paul led toward a chimney on the final pitch, he let out an equivocal chuckle…. ‘What?’ ‘A piton.'”
-
My Big Scary First Ascent
|
Before she and Bev Johnson made the first female ascent of El Capitan, Sibylle Hechtel lead her first unclimbed big wall in the Wind Rivers: “Dick handed me our minimal gear, pointed, and said, “Just head up that corner until you get to a good ledge, and set up a belay.’ I gulped.”
-
Tower I Ice Couloir, Mt. Helen
|
Bill Lindberg and I are several pitches up a narrow couloir on the north side of Mt. Helen. A thick, even ribbon of white divides the tawny-grey granite walls that rise steeply above us on either side. The granular, late-season ice accepts the picks of our piolets and rigid crampon points perfectly. Thus far, the climb has been so straightforward that we might have rehearsed it ahead of time; we are both exhilarated to be moving rapidly on an unclimbed alpine line.” In 1971, two climbers put new alpine gear to the test on what was the first ascent of…
-
Sticking Needles in the Haystack
|
In 1969, at the age of 18, Jeff Lowe climbs “like a light-footed wolf” on Haystack Mountain.
-
Extra Left Klettershoe
|
After climbing classics every day,” Doug Robinson recalls, “it was easy to assume that the great lines had all been snatched up. Our steps turned homeward, with lingering views of the great Cirque vanishing over Warbonnet’s shoulder. One last wall, Sundance Pinnacle, hesitated our footfall.” In this essay, Robinson recalls his first, first ascent in 1966.
-
Wyoming’s Range of Light
|
Royal Robbins recounts a sojourn to the Winds in 1964: “Two things that you don’t usually find in the Sierra, but that you can expect in the Wind Rivers, are a thick population of mosquitoes and bad weather in the summer. Also, in certain areas you may encounter enormous herds of sheep.”
-
Alpinist 55 Mountain Profile Essays | Wind River Range
|
Read all seven essays by Royal Robbins, Doug Robinson, Jeff Lowe, Raymond G. Jacquot, Sibylle Hechtel, Joe Kelsey and Dick Dorworth from the Mountain Profile of the Wind River Range. –Ed.
-
Typologies of Silence
|
In “Typologies of Silence,” the Sharp End article for Alpinist 55, Editor-in-chief Katie Ives discusses some of the muted stories in accounts of early American mountaineering–as well as the efforts to create a more inclusive history today.
-
Between the Earth and the Sky
|
For our Climbing Life department in Alpinist 55, high school student Kai Lightner writes about his first multipitch traditional climb on Stone Mountain, with Yosemite pioneer Doug Robinson. For more, wide-ranging stories from our print magazine contributors, pick up a copy of Alpinist 55.
-
Poetry Feature: Three Poems by David Wilson
|
“Tell me again about being single-minded, / about couloirs bulging with fat blue ice / and dawn arriving high in the Alps; / how a slope exists at a perfect angle / where it all might kick in again.” Read three poems from David Wilson.
-
Home: an Index
|
“There is glacial power in language, in naming things. I am here because my mother gave me a vocabulary for motion,” poet Devi Lockwood writes about her experiences growing up as the daughter of a mountaineer–in this essay for Alpinist 55. Subscribe today or preorder at the Alpinist.com store.
-
Local Hero: Clint Helander on Mark Westman
|
Why Mark Westman should be famous (A postscript to Alpinist 19). May’s everlasting sun hovered in a low, lateral arc over the Alaska Range, bathing the massive peaks in fiery light. Waves of clouds washed up the Kahiltna Glacier and flooded the lower mountains in an ever-darkening fog.
-
The Path
|
It’s 3 a.m., July 2015. We walk through the darkness, headlamps illuminating our path. A cool breeze awakens the trees, and the creek bubbles to life as we switchback up the trail. Our movement becomes rhythmic. Three hours pass rapidly. Faint light paints the horizon, and the mountains are stirred awake…