An exciting video of Steph Davis and Mario Richard BASE jumping and then climbing a Steve Hong and Steve Carruthers’ route, Glad To Be A Trad (5.13a, 50m), in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. According to Desert Rock: Rock Climbing in the National Parks, written by Eric Bjornstad, the line climbs a right-facing dihedral to a thin crack on the upper face of the canyon wall.
Aerial footage of Dawn Glanc and Tim Emmett climbing in Iceland’s West Fjord gives us a new perspective on big ice routes. The wide-angle lens of the hovering aircraft shows the full context of the climb–the coast, turf houses, treeless landscape and snow-covered roads–not just the up-and-down views of typical climbing films. Within this setting, the two climbers look almost insignificant.
A combination of bulletproof, dinner-plating ice and poor technique give two climbers an exciting day at Coire an t-Sneachda in the Scottish Cairngorms. After taking two falls, they still finished the climb.
Daniele Nardi (Italy) and Elisabeth Revol (France) are attempting the first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat (8125m) in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. They have been capturing video footage in the midst of their cold and windy attempt, giving us a good impression of what it’s like up there this time of year.
In 1971, a 19-year-old John Bouchard, climbed the 400-foot Black Dike up Cannon Cliff, solo, despite having a stuck rope, one mitten and a broken pick. In his time, a WI4+ was unheard of, and only four years earlier, the hardest “stepless ascent” was Mount Washington’s Pinnacle Gully at WI3+.
“Chasing the Unknown,” Episode 9 of the Regulators, takes you from the start of the ice season this year in October as my partners and I started hitting the hills in search of ice. It seems like every year we start searching earlier, yet we still expect to find ice somewhere.
It’s COMING!
In July 2012, Tom Livingstone and Tom Ripley made a two day ascent of the Cassin Ridge on the South Face of Denali.
Marion Poitevin and Philippe Batoux climb the Cornuau-Davaille route on the north face of Les Droites.
I’d just completed the hardest climb of my life, one of the longest in the history of the range. Laid out at our feet, the spires and seracs emerged in stark shapes of light and dark. I sat down, and the view below disappeared. Glaciers, ridges, cracks and even summits– none of them were what I traveled to Patagonia to find. I came here to begin to lead my life intentionally, not to drift anymore, but to choose my own path. Now, I was starting to see the way. — Cheyne Lemp, Alpinist 39
