At noon on April 25, 2015, I was walking with my client on a rocky trail in the valley between the Nepali villages of Chukhung and Dingboche. The air smelled of wood smoke and juniper. A handful of shaggy yaks grazed in the distance. There was no wind.
The ground shook without warning. I lurched sideways. Rocks the size of pickup trucks crashed down the valley walls to our left and right, bouncing like rubber balls before shattering into splinters.
On October 3, 2014, David Allfrey, Skiy DeTray and Cheyne Lempe climbed the 16-pitch A4 El Capitan testpiece Zenyatta Mondatta, shaving several hours off the speed record. Yesterday, DeTray’s cousin Dave Coy sent us an 8.5-minute film, containing footage he captured during their climb.
We talk with Norbu Tenzing Norgay, son of Tenzing Norgay Sherpa (who summited Mt. Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953), to learn about the unfolding humanitarian crisis on Everest.
Ten years after a brutal fall left him shattered, James Lucas achieved a life-long goal: a free ascent of Freerider on El Capitan in a single day. Jens Holsten reflects on his friend’s accomplishment, and on a life committed to climbing.
Senja Island, the second largest island in Norway, is a spectacular and pristine land that faces the open Norwegian Sea on the country’s ragged northwest coast. The coastal region, with its fickle winter weather, is perfect for mixed climbing protected by trad gear.
Lately I’ve been missing the quiet wilderness of Argentina and have been feeling the pull to return to the simplicity of those windy peaks on the edge of the Southern Hemisphere. In 2002 I visited the smoking mountains of El Chalten and entered into perhaps the most powerful flow state I’ve ever experienced. The Call describes this vague process. I don’t understand it any better today than I did back then, but every moment I’m pursuing my arts is an attempt to further the deepness of these elevated states.– Dean S. Potter
Last week, we published a NewsWire by Jens Holsten on the 1,250-foot alpine route he and Vern Nelson Jr. established in the Cascade Mountains in memory of alpinist Chad Kellogg. As a follow-up, Holsten agreed to republish his story Never Ending from Alpinist 47 on his travels with Kellogg in the Cascades and their last climb together in Patagonia.
On February 21, 2015, Caroline (Caro) North and Christina Huber (AU) reached the summit of 10,262-foot Cerro Torre via the Ragni Route (M4 90 degrees, 600m), marking the first all-female team ascent, done free and unsupported, of the Patagonian tower.
I first noticed the line, at the Sabbatical Wall in Indian Creek, Utah, last spring. I was mesmerized by its 150-foot wildly overhanging dihedral system composed of multiple offwidth roofs, all set on alluring red-brown Wingate 200 feet off the ground.
It was love at first sight when Ken Yager met Yosemite Valley for the first time in 1972. Living in Davis, California, 13-year-old Yager and his parents drove five hours east in the family car to Yosemite. The first thing he wanted to see in the Valley was El Capitan, a 3,000-foot-high granite monolith that loomed above the valley floor.
