Climbing
ArchiveA 36-year-old Briton died Sunday after being struck by falling rock while climbing in Pembroke, the British climbing site UK Climbing reports. Jonathon Woods of Bristol, U.K., was rock climbing with his girlfriend at Pembrokeshire sea cliff of Bosherston Head when he…
Unlike traditional sports like hockey or football, climbing's big moments aren't televised. There's no network that broadcasts first ascents or hard free solos as they happen. Instead, climbing filmmakers fill that role. They follow athletes into some of the world's deepest corners and crevices to capture the sport's progression on…
The American Alpine Club recognized outstanding achievements in conservation, climbing, mountaineering and community service at its Annual Benefit Dinner on February 26 in Seattle, Washington. The Robert and Miriam Underhill Award went to 88-year-old Fred Beckey for his lifetime…
Carlo Traversi on Saturday made the second ascent of The Game, a proposed V16 put up by Daniel Woods last year in Boulder, Colo., and heralded as possibly the hardest bouldering problem in the world. About a dozen people were present to watch Traversi send…
Many readers of ϳԹ Online’s Blog have seen my posts for a couple of years. You may have seen my byline at the end of each post Arnette is a speaker, mountaineer and Alzheimer’s Advocate. He is climbing the 7 Summits throughout 2001. He has summited Vinson and Aconcagua…
Mountaineers and climbers can now log the peaks they bag on the new site peakery.com. The site currently boasts 150,339 peaks. Those into notching their accomplishments for everyone to see can build their own peaks page and share photos and videos from their…
It doesn't matter if you're Reinhold Messner or Ed Viesturs: your summit never happened unless Elizabeth Hawley says it did.
The annals of adventure are filled with people who didn't come back alive. Here, those closest to six departed luminaries share their memories and the keepsakes that have helped them move forward.
Courtesy of Polish Winter Himalayan Mountaineering Weather forecasts aren't good for the Polish mountaineers making their way up Pakistan's 26,400-foot Broad Peak this week. “The beginning of the summit attempt doesn't look too well,”…
Nepal 2011, Namaste, Khumbu Climbing Center from Cedar Wright on Vimeo. Here's a quick short from Cedar Wright that captures the essence of the Khumbu Climbing Center. The school aims to train Nepali climbers and high altitude workers in order to reduce their risk to injury and…
Outdoor enthusiasts have one week left to weigh in on new climbing rules proposed by Arches National Park. Arches established its current climbing policy in 2006, in the wake of Dean Potter's controversial ascent of Delicate Arch. While many Utahns were outraged by…
I am very pleased to pass on this note from Lama Geshe's son, Jigme, on the condition of his father, Lama Geshe. As I have previously reported, Lama Geshe suffered a stroke around September 20, 2010. He was flown to Kathmandu, paralyzed and in poor condition. He had surgery…
I often write about Everest but it takes a lot of words and sometimes, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So here are two “pictures” you might find interesting. The first is a short animation I created a while back showing the typical Everest south…
They climbed the biggest walls, descended the longest rivers, and sailed the highest seas. And they went farther and faster under their own power than anyone else in 2010. Chosen for their ambition, their attitude, and their audacious lines, these are ϳԹ's inaugural adventurers of the year.
In the age of DIY filmmaking and featherweight satellite modems, capturing the action—and uploading it ASAP—is just as important as nailing the summit. Nobody does it better than Jimmy Chin and the climber-producers of Camp 4 Collective. Last November, the author recruited them for an assault on the sandstone spires of Chad's Ennedi desert.
On February 24, professional climber Caroline George notched a first ascent on “Uprising” in Jordan, a 700-foot, 5-pitch route, the hardest of which was rated 5.11b. George is one of only seven women in the U.S. to be IFMGA credentialed for ski, rock and alpine guiding. ϳԹ caught up with…
(Eddie Bauer First Ascent/Celin Serbo) Professional climber Caroline George was skiing the steeps near Mont Dolent in 1997 when a snow slough swept her into a 1,200-foot fall. She survived, barely. She suffered a fractured pelvis, broken ribs, and a shattered ankle. After…
Last fall, Abbey Smith and fellow climbers Jason Kehl, Pete Takeda, and Mick Follari spent two months travelling and establishing new boulder problems in the mountains of northern India. In this guest post, Abbey details her favorite problems from the group's final destination, the…
Last August, climbers Abbey Smith, Pete Takeda, Jason Kehl, and Mick Follari went to northern India on a unique bouldering trip. For two months, the quartet traveled through the Himalayas, establishing dozens of new problems on often-overlooked blocks at the feet of some of the world's most iconic mountains. To…
Climbers are packing their duffels, continuing their training and practicing their goodbyes. They leave for Kathmandu in about a month. By now they have researched and selected their route. Some on the north, others on the south. There are over 18 named routes on Everest and a couple that are…
Fifteen-year-old French climber Enzo Oddo has made the fourth ascent of Kevin Jorgeson's massive highball problem Ambrosia in Bishop, California, reports the Bishop Bouldering Blog. Ambrosia is Oddo's headiest send so far, a 60-foot-high line that…
GII Winter Expedition | Dispatch # 4 | The way up to the summit from story.teller on Vimeo. On Feburary 2nd, we reported on the summit of Gasherbrum II by the team of Simone Moro, Denis Urubko and Cory Richards. It…
I know I am busy with my preparations for Everest in a little over a month and so are many others. There is a never ending series of tasks from planning to packing and of course training. I am pleased that I am making contact with many of my…
Climbing has announced the winners of its annual award for the fastest, highest, and hardest vertical pursuits of last year. Below is a quick listing of the Golden Piton awards for 2010, with links to the full write-ups on…
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia. Cory Richards, Simone Moro, and Denis Urubko, who knocked down the first winter ascent of Gasherbrum II last week on February 2, were hit by an avalanche on their way down to…
For the past two years, we've been hearing rumblings of a new documentary about Adam Ondra, the 18-year-old Czech prodigy widely considered to be the world's strongest sport climber. Besides a handful of clips released online, little information has been released about the as-yet-untitled film.
Steph Davis just posted step-by-step instructions on how to clean cams on the Prana blog. Beginning climbers can easily follow this quick and simple post. If you've been putting off cleaning, now's the time to grab a large…
National Geographic announced on Wednesday that 37-year-old Spanish mountaineer Edurne Pasaban has been named the People's Choice 2011 ϳԹr of the Year. In May 2010 Pasaban finished her quest to climb the world's 14…
GII Winter Expedition | Dispatch # 3 | The Cold welcome from GII from story.teller on Vimeo. Alpinists Cory Richards, Simone Moro and Denis Urubko have completed the first winter ascent of Pakistan's Gasherbrum II, according to Climbing.com. At 26,362 feet,…
This guest post is from professional climber Paul Robinson, who is currently in France on a round-the-world bouldering trip. Paul's first ascent of Lucid Dreaming (V16) was featured in the film “The Hardest Moves” at last year's…
Sixteen months after injuring his shoulder during the 2009 American Bouldering Series Nationals, Ethan Pringle made his comeback. He did it in fine style last June, when he repeated Dai Koyamada's Wheel of Life (V16/5.14d), a massive 60-plus move roof problem in Australia's Grampians. Since then, Pringle, 24, has been on…
Courtesy of Flickr Alpinists Simone Moro, Denis Urubko and Cory Richards are attempting a first winter ascent of Pakistan's Gasherbrum II, according to…
Having been home from my successful Vinson summit a few weeks now, my attention has shifted from reflection to planning. The next climb is Aconcagua in mid January. There are two major activities at this point: gear review and continued training. This will be the second climb in The…
Guides Peter Whittaker, Ed Viesturs, Seth Waterfall, Caroline George, Jake Norton, cinematographer Kent Harvey and their clients summited Vinson Massif on Antarctica, 45 years after the first ascent of the mountain. The team called in to…
I am currently stationed in Naples, Italy for another year and a half. Can you list ten things that I should accomplish in Europe while I'm here? I love to travel and fish and I am more concerned with seeing the natural beauty of the continent than anything else.BlakeNaples, Italy
From the beginning of January up until the year's final weeks, climbing news has been chock-full of bar-raising ascents across all disciplines. We've seen V16 boulders, big wall speed records, and new-school ascents on ice. The sport as a whole has advanced too—climbing may have an Olympic appearance in its…
Standing on the summit of Antarctica’s Mt. Vinson at 16,067’ was one of the highlights of my climbing career. Not only was it one of the most breathtaking views I have ever witnessed from a mountain, the meaning was simply overwhelming. Vinson was the first of my 7 Summits Climb…
Russian BASE jumper Valery Rozov traveled to Antarctica's 9,616-foot Mount Ulvetanna so he could be the first to climb and jump off the rock in temps as low as -22 degrees. Enough said. Via Wend. –Joe Spring…
Bought an Avalung recently? Black Diamond has some bad news for you. The plastic intake hose on some of the new ones can crack in cold weather, so the company is recalling a number of Avalungs made in 2010, according to a company statement released today. The issue doesn't…
The frozen continent. Photo Courtesy of Flickr Despite -22°F temperatures, a steady band of adventurers has opened the season on Vinson Massif, Antarctica's highest peak and one of the Seven Summits. Team Latitude, a Norwegian team, was…
The trailer for an upcoming movie about Czech climber Adam Ondra. Adam Ondra climbed his first two V15 boulder problems this week, sending Big Paw and From The Dirt Grows The Flowers in two days during a stopover in Chironico, Switzerland, Climbing Narc is…
Don't worry, it's not that Delicate Arch. Renan Ozturk, Jimmy Chin, and crew discovered a rock in Chad that inspired a similar name. They immediately set out to scale it. With our limited time the team quickly sprung into…
Human remains found near Las Vegas earlier this month are those of John Rosholt, an Arizona climber and professional gambler who has been missing for the past five years, police say. Rosholt, 54, came into prominence in the late 1990s with ascents of hard trad routes like Ruby's Cafe and…
Renan Ozturk, Jimmy Chin, Alex Honnold and a cast of all-star climbers set off earlier this month for Chad. No, the country doesn't conjure up images of the world's most epic climbs, but that's the point. The team flew to the African country to find new routes.
I think the answer to “Can you hear me now?” will soon be “You are WHERE!” Well perhaps the summit of Mt. Everest this spring will be the answer from some climbers. The Swedish company Teliasonera is investing over US$100M to expand 3G cell phone coverage throughout Nepal including…
As climbers Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson continue their push to free the long-standing Dawn Wall/Mescalito project on El Capitan this week, anyone with an internet connection has the opportunity to follow climbing history in the making. Since the pair began their attempt…
Welcome to The 7 Summits Climb for Alzheimer's: Memories are Everything. It is on! And it is, simply put, to find a cure for Alzheimer's and support families who are living with this disease. My first climb is in a few weeks to Antarctica. But before I go any…
Dean Potter and Sean Leary set a new speed record for the Nose route of El Capitan on Saturday. The pair climbed the 2900-foot route in two hours, thirty-six minutes, forty-five seconds, just twenty seconds faster than the record set by Hans Florine and Yuji Hirayama in 2008. In…
Lucky Chance started getting attention from the mainstream media last year when a video appeared on YouTube of him BASE jumping off the “Death Swing,” a 100-foot-long, clifftop rope swing in Australia's Blue Mountains. Chance, a 27-year-old stuntman, rock…
We all knew it was coming. As previously reported, the summit by 13 year-old Jordan Romero from the Tibet side of Everest created shock waves throughout the mountaineering community … and authorities. Joining Nepal’s minimum age limit (16 from Nepal) to climb Everest, the China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA)…
After ten years of work, British climber Leo Houlding has made the first ascent of The Prophet, a new free route on Yosemite's El Capitan, Deadpoint Mag reports. The Prophet ascends the right side of El Cap, linking up pitches from established routes Bad To…
“Honey, I miss our bed.” Photo Courtesy Flickr High speed Internet access is now available in the Mount Everest base camp, Reuters reports. Nepali telecom company Ncell constructed the 3G-capable structure to…
I was climbing my local favorite, Colorado's Longs Peak earlier this year and noticed a new sign beside the trail. This was near the Diamond, famous for world class big wall climbs from Casual Route, 5.10a to Ariana at 5.12a and more. To be clear I was doing the passive…
Photo of the Himalayas courtesy of ilkerender on Flickr. Joe Puryear fell to his death on Tuesday while climbing Labuche Kang, a 24,170-foot mountain in the Himalayas, the Seattle Times reports. The 37-year old fell 1,500 feet when a cornice…
It's huge. It's nasty. And it's a beast to get up. But guess what: The summit is worth all the hard work it takes to get there.
Chris Sharma has won the Masters Series I Psicobloc, a unique new deep water solo climbing competition held in the Spanish city of Bilbao this weekend, reports Prana. Over 4,000 spectators lined the banks of the Bilbao Estuary to watch Sharma, 29, and over a…
Update: According to Jeeban Ghimire, director of Sherpa Shangri-La Treks, which organized the expedition, the search has been called off. After a six hour aerial survey, the search team deemed it unlikely he would have survived given the rough icy terrain where the avalanche occurred. Various reports say that Nima…
This year, Reel Rock moved away from its usual feature-oriented format to focus on short films. Co-creators Sender Films and Big UP Productions spent months documenting some of the most talked-about sends and stunts of the past few…
Photo Courtesy of Flickr Nearly half of all climbers attempting to summit Mount Kilimanjaro in 2010 had altitude sickness, a study from Edinburgh University shows. The university's scientists camped out at 15,500 feet and tested 200 climbers on their bids for the…
Photo by Didrik Johnck Michael Brown, Erik Weihenmayer, and the Soldiers to the Summit team sent notice that they bagged Lobuche yesterday. It is…
Climbing Himalayan mountains in the Fall can be risky at best. Each day is shorter, it is progressively colder and winter looms. So every summit, especially Everest, is highly valued by the climbers. This year, Fall 2010, we saw two summit successes of very different types. First up is the…
Matt Wilder working Iron Monkey (via ClimbingNarc) Just a few weeks after his surprise second-place finish at the Nor'easter bouldering competition, Brian Kim has made a rare ascent of Eldorado Canyon's hardest trad climb, Iron Monkey (5.14 R),…
It's a good thing my mom isn't here watching me climb. This is definitely not the safest thing I have ever done.— Eric Larsen, Day 44, Camp 4 Explorer Eric Larsen moved with his team up to…
At 34, Ueli Steck is one of the fastest and most versatile climbers around today. Practically unknown to most Americans, the Swiss alpinist has set speed records on some of the Alps' toughest walls, including the Eiger's infamous north face, and has summited both Gasherbrum II and Makalu.
By Stephen Regenold For virtually any outdoors adventure, the right gear can give you an edge. But in few product categories does this ring as true as it does with lighting. For activities at night, an ill-performing headlamp, flashlight, or other source of…
We are most of the way through the Fall 2010 climbing season in the Himalaya. So far, not so good with one exception. Arguably Cho Oyu at 26907′ is the most climbed Himalayan mountain in the Fall. It is the 6th highest mountain and climbed from Tibet. Poor weather…
Climber Daniel Woods has made the second ascent of Jaws II at Rumney, the hardest sport climb in the eastern US, Climbing Narc reports. Originally established by Dave Graham as Jaws (5.14d), Jaws II climbs up a steeply overhanging schist wall in the White Mountains…
In between covering rounds of the UBC Pro Tour at the Nor'easter last weekend, I managed to sneak out and have a look at some of the gear on display in the sponsor village. The exhibitors at the Nor'easter had loads of new equipment to show…
If you have ever climbed in the Himalaya, you probably were as shocked by this headline as I was to receive the news. Lama Geshe suffered a stroke around September 20, 2010. He was flown to Kathmandu, paralyzed and in poor condition. He has since undergone an initial surgery…
Any article about death on a mountain is difficult to write. I am concerned about getting the facts wrong, perhaps offending family and friends. However, it serves a purpose of exploring the reason for incident and reminding everyone that mountains can be deadly. The best source year after year is…
After spending the morning checking out the Nor'easter sponsor village, slacklining, and trying my hand at artificial ice climbing (more on that later), I got the chance to sit down with climber Daniel Woods. Woods, who crushed all six…
Ethan Pringle and Alex Johnson took first place at the Nor'easter, the final Unified Bouldering Championships event of the season, competing for a crowded audience in Lincoln, New Hampshire. The men's division turned unexpectedly competitive after front-runner Daniel Woods failed to top the first problem, dropping the…
The Nor'easter bouldering competition kicked off today with qualifiers at Loon Mountain, New Hampshire. After an incredible series of snafus including lost rental car keys, a lost phone, and a broken camera, I made it to the comp just in time to…
On September 12, Stephen Wampler set out to become the first person with Cerebral Palsy to climb Yosemite’s El Capitan. Joining him were two experts…
The Road to the Nor'easter with Sonnie Trotter & Russ Clune from NE2C…
ϳԹ Magazine offers free photo galleries. See the best in outdoor photography, featuring top pictures of climber Alex Puccio.
After the grueling two-week Mount Hood search in 2006, Oregon lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to require cell phones for climbers. Replay: after a brutal 2009 search on the same peak, above, Washington introduced a similar bill, according to an extensive story in Northwest…
For Alex Honnold, 2010 was the summer of speed. The 24-year-old climber, who's famous for his hard free-solo ascents, switched gears this summer, blazing up big walls in Yosemite and Squamish and making the first one-day ascent of the 28-pitch sport route…