Charles Houston, 96, died peacefully in his Vermont home on Sunday.

I knew Charlie mostly as a mountain climber. From his leadership on the first ascent of Nanda Devi in 1936—the highest mountain ascended until Annapurna was climbed 14 years later—to his expeditions on K2 in ’38 and ’53, Charlie represented the best in climbing.

The seminal moment of Charlie’s climbing life came on K2 in 1953. He and his partners decided to put their entire effort into rescuing team member Art Gilkey, who was incapacitated by altitude sickness. They knew that the rescue was not only virtually impossible, but that it would also very likely cost them their lives. The men placed the contract of the belay—the brotherhood of the rope as Charlie would so often refer to it—above concern for self. They failed to save Gilkey. But, against great odds, they succeeded in bringing each other down alive. Reinhold Messner said, “I have great respect for the Italians who summitted K2 for the first time in 1954, but even greater respect for the Americans and the way they failed in 1953. They were decent. They were strong. And they failed in the most beautiful way you can imagine. This is the inspiration of a lifetime.” Their heroic dedication to one another, to staying together and bringing each other down safely, remains an example not only for all climbers but for all people.

Charlie’s vision expanded well beyond the mountains. His book Going Higher was and is the bible of high altitude medicine for the lay reader. Charlie’s research brought attention and understanding to human adaptation to altitude and is the underpinning of the acclimatization strategies and medical regimens employed today. Charlie was a tireless investigator. His high altitude research on Mt. Logan from 1967 to 1979, the “Operation Everest” high altitude chamber studies in 1946 and 1985, and his founding of the International Hypoxia Symposia are just a few examples. He even tinkered, in the family basement, with the creation of an artificial heart.

In 2006 I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon in the midst of the surviving members of that iconic expedition to K2. Our purpose was to sustain Charlie’s work in high altitude medicine with the University of Colorado’s Altitude Research Center, where an endowed chair was established in Charlie’s name. Mostly, however, we gathered to celebrate Charlie. As Streather, Bates, Craig, and Molenaar gathered around Charlie, I noticed that it was true what Charlie said: “We entered the mountains as strangers, but we left as brothers.”

—As remembered by Phil Powers

Photo: Gabe Rogel

In May 2009, a small team of rock climbers departed for Namibia with two goals: to find a way up an unexplored face, and to find a way into a deeper understanding of Southern Africa. At the heart of their trip lies the question, can adventure and culture combine to create understanding? “WayPoint Namibia” is the tory of their journey. With Majka Burhardt, Peter Doucette, and Kate Rutherford, producted by Alstrin Films. Now playing at select film festivals. Learn more at www.waypointnamibia.com.

The just-released trailer is below, or you can view the 8-minute short version here.

Waypoint Namibia Trailer from Majka Burhardt on Vimeo.

Majka Burhardt, Executive Producer of “WayPoint Namibia,” is a writer, climber and guide. Based in Boulder, Colorado, her experiences enable her to take on assignments not only in North America but throughout the world. Majka spent May, 2009, in Namibia and is about to launch  a film and a series of articles that will examine how to make adventure additive- when adventure goes beyond exploration and toward cultural and environmental connection.

The application deadline for two of the AAC’s major grant programs has been moved two months earlier, to ensure that grant winners can be notified before their expeditions are scheduled to depart in the spring. The new application deadline for the Lyman Spitzer Cutting-Edge Awards and the McNeill-Nott Awards is January 1 (Winners will be notified by March 1). Click here to learn more about AAC grants and to download applications.

Interested in stories of past grant recipients?  Check here for Marcus Donaldson and Nate Farr’s new route in Peru, here for Zack Smith and Renan Ozturk’s new route in Alaska and here or here for tales of Mountain Fellowship winners.

Layton Kor leading a new route in Arizona in April 2009. Photo by Stewart Green.

Last fall the AAC co-organized and hosted a major fund-raiser for the great American climbing pioneer Layton Kor, who has kidney disease and is facing a transplant. More than 1,000 people watched Kor give his first slide show in many years. Now climbers Stewart Green (who is working on a Kor biography) and Steph Davis have organized a sustained and fun new effort to raise money for the 70-year-old legend’s medical bills.

The Layton Kor Climbing website explains how you can help: Each time you make a donation in $25 increments, you’ll be entered in drawings for the chance to climb a famous Kor route with Davis, Conrad Anker, Tommy Caldwell, Jimmie Dunn, or Eric Hörst. Or you might win gear or clothing from prAna, Five Ten, Mammut, Marmot, The North Face, MSR/Therm-a-Rest, Clif Bar, or Backcountry.com. There are also Kor trivia contests (tough!) to try, historic signed Kor photographs for sale, and lots of Kor stories and photos to browse through. It’s a great website for a great cause.

The Northwest Mountaineering Journal is a beautifully produced online journal published annually since 2004 by a team of volunteers, with support from the Mountaineers and CascadeClimbers.com. The 2009 issue of the NWMJ has just been released, with eight feature stories and a compilation of new climbing routes and first ski descents from April 1, 2008, through March 31, 2009. Congratulations to AAC member and lead editor Lowell Skoog and his all-volunteer team: Ralph Bodenner, Steve Firebaugh, Alex Krawarik, Matt Perkins, Rad Roberts, Steve Smith, Curt Veldhuisen, Gary Yngve, and Aaron Zabriskie.

Denali from the north.

Will Denali National Park and Preserve increase the special-use fee that climbers pay to attempt Mt. McKinley or Mt. Foraker? That’s the rumor, although no fee increase has been formally proposed. To stave off a potential increase, the AAC has been working closely with the Access Fund, the American Mountain Guide Association (AMGA), and guide services and air-taxi companies that work in the national park.

Climbers currently must pay $200 apiece to attempt North America’s highest mountain or nearby Mt. Foraker. (A $150 fee was implemented in 1995 and increased a decade later.) To help pay for its mountaineering program, which has an annual budget over $1 million, Denali National Park has been rumored to be weighing a fee increase to $500.

In May, Phil Powers, Doug Walker, and Charlie Sassara from the AAC joined Access Fund and AMGA representatives, along with business owners, in a meeting with Denali’s superintendent to learn more about the park’s needs and to voice concerns about any fee hike. Powers, the AAC’s executive director, followed up with a letter to Denali superintendent Paul Anderson outlining current and potential ways the climbing community can help the park meet its objectives. In late July, eight leaders of guide services, air-taxi companies, and NOLS wrote to Alaska’s senatorial delegation, urging the senators to push for full funding for Denali National Park from the Interior Department. The business owners also expressed their concerns about the unfairness of a special-use fee targeting climbers.

“Before the NPS looks to expand mountaineering fees, the Park should look at other, non-mountaineering related programs to determine how much it costs to provide these services and what percentage of these costs are passed on to the visitors who use them,” the letter states. “It appears that climbers are inappropriately being singled out…. From our perspective, this management practice may be counter to NPS policies, which state that “[f]ee rates will be reasonable and equitable, and consistent with criteria and procedures contained in law and NPS guidance documents.”

The pressure for a fee hike may have eased in the short run, because the House of Representatives as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee have passed the Interior Department budget for fiscal-year 2010 with only minor revisions; full Senate approval is expected this month. But the issue may yet resurface, and the AAC’s Phil Powers said the club will continue to work with Denali National Park to address its funding concerns.

We realize that this is not space. This is Brad's camera before leaving the ground.

A presentation by Astronaut John Grunsfeld, “The Hubble Repairman”

September 30, 2009

American Mountaineering Center

710 10^th Street, Golden, CO

VIP Reception:

6:00pm-7:15pm

$35 for AAC/CMC members and

Friends of the Library/Museum

$50 for non-members

Includes admission to the presentation, appetizers and drinks

RSVP by September 25 to Dana Richardson

303-384-0110 x10

Presentation:

7:30pm-9:00pm

$5 for AAC members/$10 for non-members

Seating is first-come, first served (no RSVP necessary to attend just the presentation)

In Ansel Adam’s preface to Mount McKinley: the Conquest of Denali, the great photographer wrote, “Without exaggeration, I fully expect to hear someday that Brad has visited the moon, climbed Copernicus, and photographed the lunar Apennines from a private, orbiting module.”

While Bradford Washburn didn’t make it to space, we’re happy to say that his expedition camera did. Last May, as a crew of NASA astronauts completed the final repairs and enhancements to the Hubble, astronaut John Grunsfeld brought along a much smaller, older camera. Grunsfeld, an avid climber, snapped the final photos that will ever be taken with the late-Washburn’s famous expedition camera, a 1929 Zeiss Maximar B.

On September 30, Grunsfeld will return the camera to the American Alpine Club, to be displayed in the Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum. He will also talk about the mission and present the photographs he took from space, which will be displayed alongside a collection of Washburn’s personal favorites. We suspect that Earth’s mountains will look smaller in the photos from space, but no less spectacular. Come see for yourself!

A limited number of autographed prints are expected to be available, free of charge.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Honnold, winner of Bates Award. Photo courtesy of Celin Serbo.

First, who is “Bates”? Robert Bates, a renowned explorer, alpinist, Peace Corps director, and educator, accomplished numerous first ascents in Alaska and was a member of the American expeditions to K2 in 1938 and 1953. His literary contributions describing the K2 expeditions and his life of adventure in the mountains have inspired countless young American climbers. He served the American Alpine Club in many capacities: member of the editorial board of the American Alpine Journal, board member, President, and Honorary President. Above all, he devoted his life to promoting the education and development of American youth through his years as a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy, service with the Peace Corps, and other endeavors. He also was on that famous climb of Lucania and Steele with Washburn in 1937, when they crash-landed on the glacier and the pilot agreed to leave them there but would not return. Instead of bailing, they climbed the two peaks (making the first ascent of Lucania) and walked out the far side. They both were in their mid-20s. Now that’s spirit.

To recognize his many contributions to American climbing and education of our nation’s youth, the American Alpine Club established the Robert Hicks Bates Award for outstanding accomplishment by a young climber. It recognizes a young climber who, in the judgment of the volunteer selection committee, has demonstrated exceptional skill and character in the climbing or mountaineering arts and has outstanding promise for future accomplishment.

This year’s Bates Award goes to…Alex Honnold. Alex burst onto the climbing scene with a splash of headlines, first in Fall 2007 with his one-day free-solo link-up of the Rostrum and Astroman, and then again in Spring 2008, with a first free-solo ascent of Moonlight Buttress, (5.12+) in Zion. These impressive feats were followed by equally impressive ones: an 8.5-hour free ascent of El Capitan’s Salathé Wall, the first free-solo ascent of the Regular Route on Half Dome, and many others. At 23, Alex is one of the most accomplished rock climbers today. Some of his other groundbreaking ascents include an onsight ascent of Masters Edge (E7 6b) at Millstone, UK, as well as an onsight free solo of London Wall (E5) in the same area; an onsight of Gaia (E8 6c); and repeats of some of the hardest desert routes, such as Concepción and Belly Full of Bad Berries. He lives in Sacramento, California.

The award will be formally announced at the 2009 Craggin’ Classic on October 9. Perhaps the biggest climbing party ever to hit the Salt Lake City area, the festival will include a day at the crags with renowned climbers like Lynn Hill, Steve House, Cedar Wright, Caroline George, Jasmin Caton, Kate Rutherford, Mikey Shaefer, Kitty Calhoun, Nancy Feagin, and Jim Donini. They’ll host a handful of eclectic sessions, including Sport Climbing for Boulderers, Trad Climbing for Sport Climbers, Bouldering for Weaklings, and Locals Only Tours led by an all-star cast of SLC underground climbers who know every nook, cranny, and crimp in the Wasatch. Alex will not be able to attend in person, but will accept the award via video.

Photo courtesy of AccessPanAm.com.

Activists from seven countries (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and United States) gathered at the Squamish meeting, and the problems discussed ranged from proposed dams near Cochamó, Chile, to gangs hassling climbers in Brazil. The participants agreed that local climbers must solve local problems, but Access Pan America hopes to provide knowledge and other valuable resources to smooth the path.

The AAC is already involved in several initiatives in Latin America that will help ensure long-term climber access. In Peru, the has helped build a composting toilet for climbers and trekkers in the heavily used Ishinca Valley, and the club’s Alpine Conservation Partnership is working on watershed and land-use issues in other alpine areas of Peru. The club worked with the UIAA to lessen the impact of potentially onerous new rules in Huascarán National Park. In Argentinean Patagonia, the AAC and Patagonia Inc. are cosponsoring a multiyear project to build sustainable trails and other climber amenities in Los Glaciares National Park.

Access Pan America’s meeting in Canada was backed with funding and airline tickets from the Petzl Foundation and Mountain Gear, and was hosted by the Squamish Mountain Festival. Climber activists from Colombia, Honduras, and Peru will be joining the group’s steering committee, and Kika Bradford, the founder of Brazil’s first access organization, will serve as a part-time executive director. To learn more about the new organization, visit its web site.

The Eiger at sunset from the Mittellegi Hut. Photo by Greg Sievers.

Greg Sievers on the Eiger summit. Photo by Steve Giddings.

Approaching the Dent du Géant. Photo by Greg Sievers.

Fixed rope near the west summit of the Dent du Géant. Photo by Greg Sievers.

Greg Sievers, a longtime AAC volunteer and past section chair from Estes Park, Colorado, made a quick trip to the Alps in early September and bagged a couple of classic routes. Here’s his story.

Everything got started a day late because Lufthansa lost my bag in Frankfurt and it arrived at Steve Giddings’ house in Thoiry, France, 32 hours late. We then headed straight to Grindelwald, Switzerland, for our first route: the Mitteleggi Ridge on the Eiger. It was drizzling and foggy, but we jumped on the Jungfraujoch railway that afternoon based on a call to the Mittelleggi Hut warden, who said it was sunny up on the ridge. We rode the cog railway through the Eiger and exited at the Eismeer Station, geared up, and proceeded down a low, dark foot tunnel, out a portal, and onto the glacier. We made the 2.5-hour approach up the mostly fourth-class south face of the Eiger and arrived just before sunset at the Mittelleggi Hut at 11,000 feet, in time for dinner. I perused the guest logbook after dinner and found American names at a rate of about one pair per month among the 40 people per day that max out this little hut and climb this route. But I was pleased to see that most of them had listed “AAC” as their affiliation.

We roped up the next morning at about 6:30 and summited (13,024′/3,970m) about 11 a.m. One can’t possibly make any mistakes in route-finding—the ridge is an extremely sheer knife-edge with 3,000 feet of smooth wall to the left (south) and 6,000 feet to the right (north) toward Grindelwald. It was really weird to have all the difficult sections fixed with 1.5-inch nylon rope, attached to honkin’ big steel stanchions. But I wasn’t tempted to pass up any of the ropes in an attempt to free-climb this fractured choss-pile of a mountain. The rock is just a crumbling, decomposing pile of limestone tiles. At the upper crux, the tail end of the next rope swung free 20 feet below the first steel anchor on the near-vertical arête. It was my “lead,” and I sighed out loud, rolled my eyes at Steve, and said, “This is too weird!” Then I wrapped a prusik around the fixed rope, took off my light gloves to maximize my grip, and hauled away. The act of yarding my ass up this rope offended my very core as a climber, but “when in Rome….” Eyeing the rock quality, I knew I wouldn’t want to try to free-climb this crap anyway.

It was a cloudless, windless, beautiful day to look out across the Bernese Alps. We originally thought we’d descend by the west flank, but changed our plan to follow the herd on the standard descent of the south ridge. Steep down-scrambling and rapping on fixed anchors was followed by a traverse of a sheer ridge along the col toward the Mönch, and then we dropped onto the glacier and circumnavigated the Mönch clockwise to find the Jungfraujoch rail station and its portal into the earth. The round-trip from the village had taken exactly 24 hours. The Mittellegi is truly a mountaineer’s route of a modest level, but it will test your vertigo and focus. Find more details here.

We spent a lovely night in Gridelwald and then drove south to Täsch, which involved putting our car on a flatbed rail car and going through a ten-mile-long tunnel. Täsch is the closest point one can drive to Zermatt; you park there and catch the cog railway up to Zermatt. The weather was holding, and we had hoped to climb the Italian Ridge of the Matterhorn. Upon gathering info at the Alpine Center, however, we were informed that the Italian Ridge was closed due to a massive rock fall/ridge collapse. We heard that 40 people had been choppered off the ridge. The forecast called for rain late the next day, so we packed light crag packs and took yet another railway up about 5,000 feet, and then did a five-pitch rock route at the foot of the Dufoursptize (Monte Rosa) on an alpine outcropping called the Riffelhorn. The weather people were right: It snowed five inches down to about 10,000 feet that night. We returned to Steve’s house just north of Geneva and waited out a couple of rainy days.

Trying to salvage the end of the trip, we drove through the tunnel under Mont Blanc and popped out in the Courmayeur valley of Italy. Grabbing the tram, we were hoisted up about 7,000 feet to the Torino Hut. Saturday morning dawned clear and cold. We headed due north across the Géant glacier to climb the Dent du Géant (13,166′/4,013m). After scrambling up a good 2,000 feet of fourth-class terrain, we arrived at the fantastic 500-foot granite tooth. (Learn more about the route here.) Two pitches of steep, exposed, tricky 5.7 in mountain boots gained more fat ropes fixed to this frequently guided route. The summit pitches were short but super-exposed. Three 50-meter rappels got us to the snow, and we were back at the Torino Hut for a wonderful dinner by 7 p.m. The round-trip totaled 10 hours. By the way, the hut fee for bunk, dinner, and breakfast was 42 euros for members and 56 euros for nonmembers. Remember to travel with your AAC membership card to get that nice discount!

Sunday morning again was calm and clear. We headed south to the Trident du Tacul, a small tower of beautiful golden granite that resembles the Petit Grepon in Rocky Mountain National Park. But crowds on the route soon drove us down, and we returned to Steve’s home that same evening. After nine days on the ground in Europe and several satisfying routes, I flew home the next day.