In Part 1 of this series on Charlie Porter, told by some of climbing partners and friends through the decades, Gary Bocarde recalls their days together in Yosemite, where Porter pushed the upper limits of hard aid in the early 1970s and climbed not for ego but for joy.
“…[A]ll was done quietly, unremarked upon, in classic Porter fashion. With his reticence, [Charlie] Porter was “old-school,” a classical figure from the pre-social, un-hyperlinked past in which actions carried greater weight than words and images…. Thus it’s mainly through hist friends and partners, a few of whom have contributed the essays that follow, that we know anything of Porter’s feats.”
Fresh off deadline, the author of our latest Mountain Profile–the North Cascades’ Picket Range–Forest McBrian sat down to debrief and explain why, among other nuggets of wisdom, “climbing is like mapping is like writing.”
Picket Range Mountain Profile writer Forest McBrian writes a short story about sharing his spiritual reconnection to the Pickets with his late stepmother.
Songwriter and videographer Evan Phillips tells the story of a Revelation Mountains first ascent–without any hype.
After months of working with writers to edit, revise and fact-check the stories that make up Issue 47 of our magazine, all that’s left for editors Katie Ives, Gwen Cameron and Shey Kiester to do is proofread.
“I wanted to climb it solo in a push, without hauling or sleeping, and I knew that if I was successful I would break the record…. It was appealing because no woman had done it in that style before, and besides, let’s face it–hauling sucks.”
Following years of quiet climbing, Alaska’s Revelation Mountains see their most active season on record.
Cory Richards, a regular Alpinist contributor, considers the realm of the uncomfortable along with the realities of modern alpinism.
Jerzy Porebski and artist Ewa Labaj explore the great alpinist’s life in a comic strip. For many, including Reinhold Messner, Buhl was, and always will be, a legend. “When Buhl was declared missing I cried, too,” Messner wrote.
