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Weekly Feature

Ham and Eggs, Community-Style

Unusual conditions in the Central Alaska Range one season leaves the classic Ham and Eggs (V 5.8 AI4) slathered in snice and yielding only to a collective, siege-style effort by the growing community of climbers at its base.

The Cobra: Memories of its First Ascent

High-desert climbing pioneer Jimmie Dunn recounts the quirky Cobra’s first ascent on a sizzling April day in 1991 when “even the ants [were] lying low” in Utah’s Fisher Towers. He bids farewell to the now-collapsed formation that was enjoyed by so many fellow desert rats over the years.

Experts Ask: Are We Loving Our Mountains to Death?

A quorum of mountain experts gathered in Golden, Colorado, to sift through the mounting social, economic and environmental challenges that have grown with the increasing populations of outdoor recreators across the world. Brad Rassler reports back.

In Memory of Charlie Porter (1951-2014)

“All his life, [Charlie Porter had] defied the odds on rock walls and oceans, from Yosemite to Antarctica. It seems improbable to imagine him knocking on the door of a hospital on the grid-square streets of Punta Arenas. Ashes in an urn, energy into dust….”

The Gloaming: Charlie Porter in Tierra del Fuego

“If you started climbing in the early 1970s, you couldn’t help being aware of the Porter phenomenon, the meteor that flashed so briefly across the climbing firmament only to vanish. I knew about the famous El Cap big-wall climbs with their evocative hippy names, and the legendary Mt. Asgard solo…But I met Charlie much later, completely out of context….”

Uncharted Space

“[A] frigid flow ran down our sleeves, exiting at elbows or coursing down over bollocks and quads into boots…. In the dim light, I stood in double boots on two sloping footholds, and I hollered down that I needed the bolt kit. ‘What?’ Charlie [Porter] answered. I’d woken him up. ‘No fuckin’ bolts! Not now, not ever!'” Russel McLean spends 10 days on the Kichatnas’ Middle Triple Peak in Part 4 of the Charlie Porter series.

The Man with the Van

With a number of hard El Capitan wall climbs under his belt, Charlie Porter drives to the Canadian Rockies in his dilapidated “California van” to climb with Bugs McKeith and the Burgess twins. In this installment of our Charlie Porter series, Alan Burgess tells of their first ascent of the now-classic Polar Circus, Cirrus Mountain, and attempt on Grand Central Couloir, Mt. Kitchener.

Charlie!

Sibylle Hechtel remembers Charlie Porter as the “burly, and utterly huggable” boyfriend of Bev Johnson, with whom Hechtel made the first all-female ascent of El Capitan. Her story continues our series on Porter’s life, as told by his friends and climbing partners.