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Alex Honnold reenacts his Moonlight Buttress (5.12+, 1,200') free solo in Zion. [Photo] Celin Serbo

Less and Less Alone: Alex Honnold

This profile of Alex Honnold first appeared in Alpinist 35 (Summer 2011). In this piece, Alex Lowther cover’s Honnold’s sudden rise to fame, from his childhood and the death of his father, to how he balances the demands of his professional climbing career with his personal priorities.

[Painting] Craig Muderlak

In the Bear’s Lodge

Many climbers observe the voluntary climbing ban at Bear Lodge (Devils Tower) during the month of June as their way to show respect for local Native American cultures. In this Climbing Life piece from Alpinist 57, Nick Mott speaks with Milo Yellowhair from the Oglala Lakota and Arvol Looking Horse, Chief of the Nakota, Dakota and Lakota, and others to learn more about their views on the history.

[Illustration] Andreas Schmidt

Pulled Apart

In this Full Value story from Alpinist 58, Rick Accomazzo tells the story of a mission he participated in as a member of Yosemite Search and Rescue in July 1975 that has haunted him ever since–its memory compounded by the loss of his friend and climbing partner Tobin Sorenson in 1980. Illustrations by Andreas Schmidt.

The book cover

Tommy Caldwell is honest and vulnerable in his autobiography ‘The Push’

Tommy Caldwell’s autobiography, The Push, is as daring as his multitude of world-class climbing accomplishments, which range from 5.14 and 5.15 sport routes around the world, and towering free ascents on Yosemite’s El Capitan–including the first free ascent of the Dawn Wall (VI 5.14d) in January 2015 with Kevin Jorgeson–to the first completion of the Fitz Roy Traverse in Patagonia with Alex Honnold in 2014. Caldwell’s writing is honest and vulnerable, which makes his moments of triumph even more inspiring.

The author as a girl on top of Mt. Azimiyeh, a peak she climbed many times with her dad. [Photo] Shirin Shabestari collection

Tea Song

In this Climbing Life story from Alpinist 58, mountaineer Shirin Shabestari writes about her childhood in Iran, where her dad introduced her to snowy peaks that inspired the dreams she continues to follow.

Leslie Hsu Oh is pictured here with her family at the cliffs of red Lockatong argillite and Brunswick shale along the Tohickon Creek, Pennsylvania. [Photo] Joe Forte

K’e yil yal tx’i: Saying Something

In this Climbing Life story from Alpinist 58, Leslie Hsu Oh takes her kids climbing and observes them learning lessons that took her a lifetime to learn. After Oh lost her birth mother and brother to cancer, her adoptive mother had encouraged her to seek a sense of kinship in the mountains.

A view of Cerro Trono from the east side of the Cordillera Sarmiento. [Photo] Whitney Clark

A foray into the ‘Never-Never Land’ of Cordillera Sarmiento, Chile

Last March Americans Whitney Clark, Jon Griffin and Tad McCrea ventured into a notoriously wet and seldom-visited coastal region of South America–Patagonia’s Cordillera Sarmiento–in hopes of climbing a peak called Alas de Angel Sur. The approach to their main objective proved too difficult to decipher in the time and weather that they had, but the team still managed to climb another peak by a route they dubbed Estoy Verde (M6 200m). Clark recounts their rain-soaked adventure.

Brette Harrington leads an offwidth choked with ice and sugar snow in the vicinity of Pitch 9 on Riders on the Storm (VI 5.12d/5.13 A3, 1300m), Torre Central, Torres del Paine, Patagonia. She used a variety of tricks to make progress, including aid moves off her ice axes. [Photo] Drew Smith

Riding the Storm on Torre Central, Patagonia

Mayan Smith-Gobat returns to the Torres del Paine in Patagonia to attempt a complete free ascent of Riders on the Storm (VI 5.12d/5.13 A3, 1300m) on the Torre Central, which she came close to accomplishing with Ines Papert in 2016. This year the weather dashed all hopes for a complete ascent, but Smith-Gobat and Brette Harrington summoned all their reserves and went up the icy wall anyway. Here Smith-Gobat relates their journey inward, upward and downward.

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.