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Kim Chang-ho (right) chats with climbing partner Choi Seok-mun (left) at a popular crag in Seoul, South Korea in September 2015. [Photo] Joo Min-wook

Local Hero: Kim Chang-ho

In this Local Hero story from Alpinist 75 (Autumn 2021), Oh Young-hoon, former editor of Alpinist Korea, memorializes Kim Chang-ho and his philosophy of “being mountaineering.”

Bronwyn Hodgins nears the top of El Capitan (Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La) in May 2021, when she became the third woman to free climb Golden Gate (5.13a, 34 pitches). [Photo] Nick Smith

Yosemite Dreams

In this On Belay story from Alpinist 76–which is now on newsstands and available in our online store–our digital editor Derek Franz travels to Yosemite to climb through layers of historical and personal past, and witnesses some history in the making.

[Artwork] Jeremy Collins

Dreams of Rising Waters

In this science fiction story from The Climbing Life section of Alpinist 76–which is now available on newsstands and in our online store–Mailee Hung considers the conundrum of climate change in a short essay. Her narrator declares: “I don’t want to go back to the land. I grew up on frenetic cartoons and fake marshmallows in breakfast cereals; I built an academic career on movies and cyborgs. We look, guilty, at our well-heeled boots, wax poetic about the feeling of our hands in dirt, but I don’t want to till the soil. The digital is like dreaming, intangible yet inextricably material: heat radiating from our bodies or server stacks. We once were wind-carved, exposed to the elements. It was hard, then, harder than skyscrapers or computer chassis. Will we be glad to have somewhere to retreat to when the waters rise?”

Book cover: Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites by David Smart. Hardcover. Published September 1, 2020, by Rocky Mountain Books. 248 Pages. $32.00 CAD.

Interview with David Smart, author of the Mountain Profile for Alpinist 76 and winner of 2021 Boardman-Tasker Award

David Smart’s book, Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites, received the Boardman-Tasker Award for Mountain Literature in November. The biography was published in 2020 and provided some of the inspiration for Smart’s Mountain Profile on the Cima Grande in the Dolomites that was recently published in Alpinist 76. In this feature, an interview with Smart explores topics related to Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites, the Cima Grande profile and Smart’s writing and climbing career.

Book cover: Dammed If You Don't by Chris Kalman, illustrated by Craig Muderlak. $24.99.

An excerpt from Chris Kalman’s award winning book, “Dammed If You Don’t”

Today we’re sharing an excerpt from an award-winning book written by a longtime Alpinist contributor and former intern Chris Kalman and illustrated by Craig Muderlak. “Dammed If You Don’t” is Kalman’s third book and recently won the Mountain Fiction and Poetry category at the annual Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival. Book competition jury member Pete Takeda wrote: “Kalman’s third book asks a very topical question: Can we love a place to death? Kalman answers this question with a spare quality that evokes a bit of James Salter. His portrayal of a lush, pristine Chilean valley is immediate and profound. His writing is peppered with the intimate details that also bring the characters, their foibles, and struggles to life. Their dilemmas soon become our dilemmas. Perhaps the best thing about ‘Dammed If You Don’t’ are the plot twists, building to a final scenario that is plausible, disturbing, and strangely uplifting.”

Betty Manning, descending the Tooth, ca. 1950s. [Photo] Courtesy of Claudia Manning

In the Wake

Alpinist 76 is now available on newsstands in our online store. In this Sharp End essay, our editor-in-chief follows in the footsteps of Harvey Manning up real mountains in the Cascades after years of research to write a book about his imaginary peaks. As she climbs the classic South Face of the Tooth, she recounts his descriptions of formative experiences in 1947 that helped inspire his efforts to preserve the land from threats of timber and mining development. Seventy-four years after Manning’s ascent, Ives strains her eyes through a haze of smoke to catch a glimpse of the range as Manning may have seen it. She writes: “While I trace more of Harvey’s hikes, I also think of what it means to write about beloved and imperiled things: to cross the arched back of a glacier and feel how much it is both living and dying, its meltwater murmuring in hundreds of voices between the blue walls of crevasses. To walk through the green shadows of giant moss-strung trees that, one hot summer day, might burst into flame.”

Image 1 of 2: This photo and the one below originally appeared as a panorama across two pages in Alpinist 75; it has been split into two frames to allow for better viewing on the webpage. It shows the view from Mt. Ilse (2506m), during its first ascent by Natalia Martinez and Camilo Rada in April 2021, in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. Mt. Ilse is named for Ilse von Rentzell, who roamed the area in 1933. Only one of the summits in this photo has been climbed, Martinez says. [Photo] Camilo Rada/UNCHARTED project

Living Maps of Patagonia: Toward a New Future of Exploration

“The Future of Alpinism,” is the theme of Alpinist 75–which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, including this one by Natalia Martinez and Camilo Rada, titled “Living Maps of Patagonia: Toward a New Future of Exploration.” They write: “We decided…to create living maps. These are maps that do not adhere to official names. Instead, we follow a historical approach trying to help restore the heritage of Indigenous people and explorers. We constantly update the maps to record each new ascent, each new encounter and each new adventure. Our aim is to create maps that are not only a miniature of a place’s geography, but that convey the feelings the geography evokes as well as the passions of those who have striven to unravel it…. Many of the unclimbed peaks that appear insignificant on sheets of contour lines could present some of the finest alpine challenges of these regions.”

Phil Henderson on the summit of Denali (20,310'), Dena'ina, Upper Kuskokwim and Koyukon Dene land, in the Alaska Range, June 27, 2013. [Photo] Kt Miller

Climbers of Color Come Full Circle: The Future of Expanded Representation

“The Future of Alpinism,” is the theme of Alpinist 75–which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, including this one by James Edward Mills, titled “Climbers of Color Come Full Circle: The Future of Expanded Representation.” He writes: “Through our personal initiative, skills and agency, people of color are affirming their roles as leaders in the climbing world. [Philip] Henderson is now organizing the first all-Black American team to attempt the world’s highest mountain in 2022. He calls it the Full Circle Everest Expedition…. Each member of this team aims to share their experience to inspire others to follow in their example…. US alpinists of color are also continuing to pursue cutting-edge objectives….”

A mountaineering chronicler and an occasional critic of the overuse of communications technology, Damien Gildea describes this photo of himself in the Sentinel Range of Antarctica. [Photo] Stephen Chaplin

Taking Time To Tell: The Future of Trip Reports

“The Future of Alpinism,” is the theme of Alpinist 75–which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, including this one by Damien Gildea, titled “Taking Time To Tell: The Future of Trip Reports.” He writes: “Alpinism is always about choices, and new technologies keep giving us more avenues to talk about our climbs. The choice of expedition media, how we use it, but also when we use it, can have lasting impacts…. If you choose to tell, by waiting for a while after the summit, you might create a more meaningful and accurate narrative…. The ego hits from ‘Likes’ are temporary, but an honest insight, gained after a period of reflection, might last indefinitely, or at least outlast you.”