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Glen Denny Remembers Valley Walls in the 1960s
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Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing and Living in Yosemite by Glen Denny. Published by Yosemite Conservancy, May 2016. 210 pages. Paperback. $18.95. During the 1960s, Glen Denny, a young college dropout and budding photographer, was part of the famous crew of riff-raff climbers who spent their days in Yosemite Valley, honing skills…
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Poetry Feature: “Kalymnos”
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This poem was inspired by climbing in Kalymnos for the first time a few years ago and thinking about that point in the day when you feel as if you’ve climbed out of your own skin.
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The Climbing Life: She Climbed Alone
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As a young climber in the 1990s, I developed a strange habit. Each year I found myself obsessively searching the American Alpine Club’s Accidents in North American Mountaineering for entries about women.
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The Climbing Life: The March of Folly
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“I’M SO GLAD TO SEE YOU BOYS,” Lee Sorenson shouted as he ran across the campsite toward us, his bearded face beaming with love and relief. His oldest son, Tobin, and I were a full day and a night overdue. It was March 1975, and we’d just made the second ascent of the Valley’s first major ice climb, Upper Sentinel Falls.
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Darwin’s Disappointment
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In September 1833, Charles Darwin set out for the four peaks of the Sierra de la Ventana alone, lured by local murmurs of caves and forests and veins of silver and gold. The small range was barely visible from the port of Bahia Blanca, a notch in the north-central Argentine coast. There, the H.M.S. Beagle remained docked with Captain Fitzroy, who had invited Darwin aboard the ship to circumnavigate the globe as a scientist.
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Solo Faces: The Camaraderie of Divine or Reckless Brotherhood
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Before I left for Chamonix to go hiking in the French Alps, I borrowed Solo Faces by James Salter from the lending library at work. My list of must-reads was long and only growing longer, but the ghostly mountain landscape of its cover caught my eye–a silhouetted man ascending a jagged peak.
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Down to the Wire
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This story is about Jack Tackle recovering from a debilitating sickness and then traveling to Mt. Augusta (14,072), Saint Elias Mountains, Yukon Territories. High on the peak’s north face, he was clocked by a rock, and rescued from the wall a few days later by Pararescue Specialists (known as parajumpers, or PJs), highly trained members of the Airforce Special Forces.
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Poetry Feature: “Belay”
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As an ecologist and a writer, I spend a lot of time contemplating how those two vocations speak to each other. Fundamentally, my research explores what it is to translate a landscape and how language shapes our perception of the ecosystems on which we depend.
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A History of Imaginary Mountains–Thoreau’s Dream: Beyond the Maps
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Behind the histories of exploration lie less-visible tales of rumored summits that prove to be nonexistent, and of physical mountains whose shapes and heights transform according to different legends.
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Friends and Family Honor Dave Bridges (1970-1999)
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On October 5, 1999, while Dave Bridges and Alex Lowe were investigating a potential ski descent on the southwest face of Shishapangma, an avalanche buried them. This spring, their remains were found on the mountain.
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A Quartet for Silent Lands: A Photo Essay
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We asked Lise Billon and Jerome Sullivan, two of the four authors of “A Quartet for Silent Lands” in Alpinist 53 (the other two authors are Diego Simari and Antoine Moineville) to share additional photos from their story for us to post online.
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Local Hero: Fay Pullen
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At seventy-three, Cascades climber Fay Pullen bushwhacks through dense thickets and climbs isolated peaks–generally alone. Cindy Beavon pays a visit to one of Washington’s most prolific soloists.
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Andrew McLean Remembers Alex Lowe, David Bridges and the 1999 Shishapangma Avalanche
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Andrew McLean shares his reflections on the 1999 expedition, the avalanche that killed Alex Lowe and David Bridges and the void left by their passing.
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Memorial Services to be Held for Eric Klimt
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Eric Klimt, a climber, teacher and videographer from Baltimore, Maryland, passed away in a climbing accident in Zion National Park on March 9. His family remembers him as an adventurer who projected routes around the globe. To remember Eric and his adventures, the Klimt family will hold two services.
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Mountain Profile: Zion National Park, A Photo Essay
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In 1904 the artist Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh wrote of the landscape that became Zion National Park: “Never before has such a naked mountain of rock entered into our minds!… There is almost nothing to compare to it. Niagara has the beauty of energy; the Grand Canyon, of immensity; the Yellowstone, of singularity; the Yosemite, of altitude; the ocean, of power; this great temple, of eternity.”
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Namesake: Tricks are for Kids
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During the mid-1980s, Steve Hong was finishing his medical studies at the University of Utah, but he wasn’t yet done with his youthful antics. On weekends, he and his partners explored Indian Creek’s arid landscape of silent towers, crimson walls and grazing cattle. There, they found fissures that would eventually rank as iconic desert climbs. One was a 160-foot crack leading skyward up a smooth panel of maroon and orange varnish
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Mingma Gyalje Sherpa’s Solo Ascent of Khang Tagri (Mt. Chobutse)
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ONLY A FEW CLIMBERS have seen Mt. Chobutse, the 6686-meter mountain above my village in the Rolwaling Valley of Nepal. In Tibetan scripture, the original name of the peak is Khang Tagri. Although the north and south ridges rise in gradual arcs, the west face looks as sharp as an upturned axe.
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1998: Leaving Llamaland
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JANUARY: SHADOWS AND SILENCE fill the canyon of Zion National Park. Within the Emerald Pools amphitheater, icicles clatter to earth. I pull out my binoculars. A gently overhanging prow on Mt. Majestic catches wan winter sun. Bracketed by deep clefts, the sleek, southeast-facing buttress rises through dark-red sandstone and mahogany iron stains.
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1998-1999: Cracks in the Walls
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COFFEE LIFTS ON THE AIR. A dog marks time (and place) in the distance, its tail a silent metronome. The cold air, gently sinking, pulls a breeze across my face. I don’t like it. I want to crawl deeper in my bag. From the floor of the living room in John “Deucey” Midddendorf’s Hurricane home, I can just see the top of Mt. Kinesava, I think, starting to light up in the eastern sun.
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1967–Anguished Moans; Occasional Songs: Mt. Tyree, Antarctica
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This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1966 American Antarctic Mountaineering Expedition. This is John Evans’s story of the first ascent of Mt. Tyree–one of six unclimbed peaks the AAME team summited.
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Through the Field: A Photo Essay
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We reached out to Graham Zimmerman, author of “Through the Field: The First Ascent of Changi Tower and The Southwest Ridge of K6 West,” in our latest issue, Alpinist 53, and asked him to share additional photos for us to post online.
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Mooncakes and Rice: Qionglai Mountains
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Qionglai Mountains, China. After several weeks of effort spread out between bouts of rainfall, Szu-ting Yi and her husband Dave Anderson completed their new route on the South Face of Eagle Peak East (5300m), calling it Secret Moon Cake (5.10 R, 760m).
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AAC Recognizes David Allfrey for Outstanding Accomplishment
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“It’s a huge honor. I’m in shock about whole thing,” David Allfrey said when we congratulated him after hearing that the American Alpine Club awarded him the Robert Hicks Bates Award.
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Yosemite in the Fifties The Iron Age: An Interview with the Photo Collector
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Photographer Dean “Bullwinkle” Fidelman, a 1970s Stonemaster, has called Yosemite his home for decades, first arriving there in 1971. He has produced several books celebrating the park’s climbing culture.
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Metanoia
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IT’S DIFFICULT TO SEPARATE WHAT part of the Eiger’s ambience is due to its actual limestone, snow and ice, and what part is due to all the stories that played out on that grand vertical stage. I don’t think it matters at this point.Most aspirants will start with those tales finely etched in their brains. At times, along the way, they’ll climb with the souls of those who perished. That’s what happened to me.
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Conrad Anker’s Guest Postings December 8 to 14
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From December 8–14, we shared glimpses of Conrad Anker’s life through images and short stories via the Alpinist Community project. Anker has authored first ascents in the Great Ranges for nearly two decades, includes new routes in the Alaska Range, Patagonia, Antarctica, the Karakoram, and the Himalaya.
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The Trail, the Road, and the Space Between
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The story of Cochamo can start anywhere. But since the trail is where all climbers now begin their adventures, that is where this story will begin. The path was likely cut by the Mapuche, “People of the Land,” or by their ancestors, some of the first known human inhabitants of Northern Patagonia.
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Dreams on a Yellow Bike
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I’ve been on the move for four hours. My first summit, strapped in winter snow, falls further behind me. I step off the ridge into a west facing couloir. Boot skiing and heel plunging morphs into log jumping and running.
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Squirreling Away First Ascents on the Storm Creek Headwall
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Canadian alpinists Jon Walsh and Michelle Kadatz, both from Calgary, Alberta, recently visited the Storm Creek Headwall.
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Paul Zizka’s Social Media Guest Postings November 30 to December 6
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From November 30 to December 6 we presented photos by Paul Zizka as part of our Alpinist Community project.