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Mt. Mizugaki (2230m), one of the peaks featured in Kyya Fukada's 1964 classic, One Hundred Mountains of Japan, translated in 2014 by Martin Hood. "Can one describe this mountain as a medley of crags?" Fukada wrote. "It is not the only mountain with crags, but what is unique about Mizugaki is the way it mixes its crags with its trees." [Photo] Satoru Hagihara

On Belay: A Thousand Days of Lapis Lazuli

After ten years as a boulderer, Keita Kurakami attempts what some other local climbers called impossible: a new free route on the daunting 110-meter Moai Face of Mt. Mizugaki. When he succeeded in July of last year, it turned out to be the hardest multipitch trad climb in Japan at 5.14a R/X.

Christ Healing the Blind, painted ca. 1657. Dawn L. Hollis observes: The image depicts the healing of two blind men recounted in Matthew 20:29-34. Their first sight will be of the mountainous vista that dominates the canvas. [Image] Philippe de Champaigne

Wired: Rethinking Mountain Gloom

Dawn L. Hollis challenges the belief in academia that people did not care for mountains until they began climbing them at the end of the eighteenth century. Further, she studies why an institution such as the British Alpine Club would react so strongly against the premise that the love people have for mountains is nothing new.

Royal Robbins [Photo] Tom Frost

1935-2017: Big-wall pioneer and world explorer Royal Robbins remembered

Royal Robbins (1935-2017) is remembered as a courageous visionary, from climbing the walls of Yosemite and the Alps, to kayaking raging rivers, and navigating his business, he embodied many lives in the span of his time on Earth and inspired generations, as evidenced by the numerous stories shared by his friends and admirers. Climbing shaped Robbins, and in turn he shaped climbing.

A Berec headlamp used by Martin Mushkin from the mid-1950s until 1980. [Photo] Michelle Hoffman

TOOL USERS: The Headlamp

In this Tool Users story from Alpinist 57, Paula Wright shines a light on the evolution of the headlamp. Since some climbers were still carrying flashlights in their mouths as late as the early 1970s, it seems that we have only recently emerged into a more illuminated age.

A climber's bookcase. [Photo] Derek Franz

The Literature of Ascent

“Literary mountain writing may now be giving way to the selfie,” Stephen Slemon writes in this essay. “But this shift towards the visual media may be opening new ground for the genre of mountaineering literature to change.” Slemon explores climbing’s ties to the written word and how the form of climbing narratives is evolving.

[Illustration] Andreas Schmidt

Full Value: Degringolade

In this Full Value story from Alpinist 56 Sibylle Hechtel recounts a pivotal moment in her climbing career–her first first-ascent, in Canada’s Bugaboos, 1973. She went on to become famous for the first all-female ascent of El Capitan with Beverly Johnson later that year, but her experience in the Bugs taught her “how to get up and back down” in the mountains.

Lungaretse (5870m). [Photo] Camilo Lopez

On Belay: Unattached

In this On Belay article from Alpinist 57, Anna Pfaff describes her adventures as she becomes “unattached” from maps, expectations and conventions and learns to find her own way into some of the unknown realms beyond.

[Image] Richard T. Walker. the fallibility of intent #1, 2015; cut-out archival pigment print; 32 x 48 in. Walker's work teeters between the humorous and melancholic, juxtaposing the sublime with what it means to be imperfect and ultimately human, wrote Amy Owen in a California Gatehouse Gallery brochure. Courtesy, Richard T. Walker

Off Belay: Beyond Conquest

In this excerpt from Alpinist 57 Mailee Hung explores artwork by Richard T. Walker that “casts unease on traditional aspirations” and helps us consider “how to describe the aesthetic experience of climbing beyond this inherited legacy” of alpinists as conquerors.