Skip to content

Home » free » Page 43

free

Looking east from the summit of North Six Shooter in Indian Creek, Utah, provides a glimpse of the 1.35-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument. South Six Shooter is in the foreground and Bridger Jack Butte and pinnacles are in the middle ground. The Abajo Mountains are in the background to the right and the La Sal Mountains are just out of view to the left. Canyonlands National Park lies behind the photographer, just a few miles to the west. [Photo] Derek Franz

Trump heading to Utah and is expected to reduce size of two national monuments

President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Salt Lake City, Utah, on Monday, Dec. 4, and he is expected to announce plans to slash the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is organizing rallies at the Utah capitol on Saturday, Dec. 2, and Monday, Dec. 4, to oppose the reductions.

Edward LaChapelle and Austin Post in 1995. Glacier Ice continues to influence current photographers' efforts to document climate change. [Photo] Courtesy Ananda Foley

Vanishing Uplands

Alpinist Editor-in-Chief Katie Ives recounts the lives of Austin Post and Edward LaChapelle and their contributions to the study of glaciers and snow, including their influential 1971 book Glacier Ice, which contained words that now read like early warnings of the impacts of climate change: “Much of modern civilization exists by virtue of a delicate balance between this climate and present snow and ice masses.” In the decades since its first publication, this collection of glacier photography has become a powerful testament to both the beauty and losses of its frozen worlds. Ives now ponders what might happen if more climbers were to look beyond some of our focus on individual fulfillment to face the bigger challenge that confronts us all.

Niels about to dodge some lightning in the Wind River Range, Wyoming. [Photo] Gareth Llewellin

Niels Tietze Remembered

Libby Sauter reflects on the life of her friend and fellow Yosemite Search and Rescue teammate Niels Tietze after he was found dead at the base of Fifi Buttress in mid-November. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Tietze made friends and climbed all over the world, picking up a wide array of jobs that included work as a ranch hand and as an ophthalmic assistant for the Himalayan Cataract Project. His parents wrote after his passing that he was “a man who in so many ways embodied the complexities of the Universe.”

Emile Rey, Katharine Richardson and J.B. Bich at the foot of the statue of Horace Benedict de Saussure and Jacques Balmat, Chamonix, France, 1890. [Photo] Courtesy of the Alpine Club

Through the Telescope

In this Mountain Profile essay from Alpinist 60, Associate Editor Paula Wright tells the story of a lasting partnership between two leading female alpinists and their adventures on la Meije in the late 1800s.

The south face of Nuptse with the new route marked by the thin red line. [Photo] Courtesy of Helias Millerioux, Benjamin Guigonnet, Frederic Degoulet

French team completes new route on Nuptse’s south face

On October 14-21, Helias Millerioux, Benjamin Guigonnet, Frederic Degoulet completed a risky new route on Nuptse’s south face in mostly alpine style, fixing only two short sections. The overall technical difficulty of their as-yet-unnamed route weighs in at M5+ WI6, 65° snow, 2342 meters. For Millerioux and Guigonnet, this was their second attempt on this route after trying it in 2015.

[Photo] Jonathan Byers

#AlpinistCommunityProject Flashback: Quinn Brett

From August 6-12, 2017, Quinn Brett shared some stories and photos for the #alpinistcommunityproject about some climbing adventures and places that were formative in her career. Based out of Estes Park, Colorado, Quinn is a climbing ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park and has become known for her big-wall speed and free climbs in Zion and Yosemite in recent years. On October 11, she slipped during a speed ascent of the Nose with Josie McKee and fell 100 feet onto a ledge. She was air-lifted to safety and has been in the hospital ever since, and has yet to regain the full use of her legs. A donation page has been set up under her name at YouCaring.com to help cover the extensive medical bills.

[Illustration] Jeremy Collins

Cartography of Prayers: Pemako

In this story that first appeared in Alpinist 54 as part of a series titled “A History of Imaginary Mountains,” Harish Kapadia recalls a journey inward while visiting a mystical Himalayan land known as Pemako. Kapadia, 72, received the 2017 Piolets d’Or-Asia Lifetime Achievement Award on November 3 in Seoul, Korea. He is the first Indian to receive the recognition.

From left: Savannah Cummins, Anna Pfaff and Lindsay Fixmer. [Photo] Lindsay Fixmer

Women’s expedition explores new routes in India’s Zanskar Range

Anna Pfaff reports on her expedition to northern India’s Zanskar Range with Savannah Cummins and Lindsay Fixmer at the end of August. The team only saw five days with feasible climbing conditions and 19 days of rain, snow, hail and wind, but they still managed to complete one first ascent and reached high ground on two other routes that they attempted on different peaks.

The Arjuna Group seen from the southwest. (1) Polish route (Barszczewski-Dasal-Skierski, 1983) up the central pillar of the west face. (2) All or Nothing (Cesen-Novak-Prezelj, 2017). Both the 1983 and 2017 routes lead to the main summit. (3) The west face of the south summit (Bender-Piasecki, 1983). This summit was first climbed by Poles in 1981 (Bartos-Otreba-Puzyrewski) up the broad couloir to the right of the west face and then the southeast ridge (approximately the right skyline) to the summit. [Photo] Marko Prezelj

Slovenians establish two new routes in the Kishtwar Himalaya

In this guest feature from the American Alpine Journal, Urban Novak reports on two new routes that he established with Marko Prezelj and Ales Cesen this past June. They acclimatized with a Grade ‘D’ route on Peak 6013, and then got lucky with a weather window that allowed them to complete their main objective, the west face of Arjuna (ca. 6250m). They named their route All or Nothing (ED+ M7+ WI5+ A0).