Spare time over the holiday? The AAC is holding a holiday video contest, and we want to hear from our many talented members making videos of their climbing pursuits.

What’s at Stake:
The first 50 entries into our holiday video contest, selected or not, will receive an AAC-engraved Piranha knife from Trango.

The top three videos will receive feature space on the blog, website and YouTube channel, as well as prizes: 1st place will receive an Osprey Mutant 38 pack, 2nd place will receive an AAC Ibex Hoody and 3rd place will receive a MSR Exo2 System. We will also rotate selected entries on this blog on a weekly basis.

The Theme:
We’re leaving this one open-ended. Your video can be funny, serious, informative or otherwise, just make it about climbing.

How to Play:
Between now and January 31, 2010, upload your not-previously-uploaded video (it can be new or old, just not uploaded in the past) to YouTube and tag it with “americanalpineclub” (be sure to spell it correctly, so we can find it). Please make sure your video is three minutes or less. By submitting your video to the contest, you are implying permission for the AAC to showcase it online.

How to Submit:
Once you’ve uploaded, shoot Emily an email at ekreis@americanalpineclub.org with your name, YouTube ID, contact information (email and phone) and the title of your video. You can also send us this info via Twitter (DM @americanalpine). We’ll make sure it’s on the AAC YouTube channel as a favorite.

How to Win:
The contest will operate solely on views, and the video with the most views by February 15, 2010 will win. We’ll spread the word from AAC headquarters, to get fellow climbers onto YouTube to check out the selection. If there’s a tie, we’ll check out the rating. Winners will be notified via email.

Questions?
Contact Emily here.

Matt Hepp nearing the summit of Denbor Brakk in Pakistan during an expedition funded in part by a Zack Martin Breaking Barriers Grant. Photo by Clint Ellis.

The AAC has awarded five new Mountain Fellowship grants to young climbers, to help pay for expeditions to Alaska and South America. They are:

• Bryan Friedrichs (24), $700, to attempt a new route on the Tusk in Alaska.

• Roberto Gonzales-Pita (21) and Greg Mionske (21), $800 each from the Boyd Everett Fund, for an exploratory climbing trip to Cordón Granito, south of Santiago, Chile. (The same two climbers recently did a long new mixed route near Mt. Evans in Colorado.)

• Blake Herrington (23), $900 REI Challenge Grant, to attempt a new route on Ambition Mountain in the Coast Mountains, southeast of Juneau, Alaska.

• Ryan Huetter (25), $400, for an exploratory trip to Cajón de Arenales, Argentina.

Since 1966, AAC Mountain Fellowships have been granted to climbers 25 and younger; the five climbers winning grants this time averaged 23 years old. These climbers were chosen from a pool of nine applicants by the committee of Yvon Chouinard, Eiichi Fukushima (Chair), James Funsten, Kestrel Hanson, Joe LaBelle, Pete Metcalf, Travis Spitzer, and Geoff Tabin. Click here to learn more about AAC Mountain Fellowships or download an application.

Demonstration emergency shelter in Kande, Pakistan. Photo by Clint Ellis.

Meanwhile, Clint Estes, the 2009 winner of the Zack Martin Breaking Barriers Grant, has recently returned from a successful trip to Pakistan with climbing partner Matt Hepp. Before climbing, the two men taught villagers in the Balti towns of Hushe and Kande how to build simple, sturdy, heatable shelters out of inexpensive local materials, to be used in the event of earthquakes or other disasters. Estes and Hepp then traveled to the Nangma Valley, where they put up one new route on a 15,750-foot tower and attempted two others. You can read Estes’ entertaining trip report here.

The Zack Martin Breaking Barrier Grant, cosponsored by Black Diamond and chaired by John Parsons, is awarded once each year to a climber or expedition combining a humanitarian purpose with a climbing expedition. Find out more and download an application at the AAC website.

A memorial event in celebration of Guy Lacelle’s life is set for January 16 in Canmore, with more details forthcoming via the Banff Mountain Film Festival Facebook page and the En Memoire de Guy Lacelle Facebook page. The event will be an evening of stories and salutations to Guy, and all family and friends are welcome to come share their best stories, put up a climb or two, and connect with others who crossed paths with this remarkable climber. Sleeping bag space is rumored to be plentiful.

Details on specific location are yet to be announced, but should come soon. Please watch the above Facebook pages for that information, and plan to attend.

A climber on Commando Ridge. Image courtesy of the BMC.

The AAC is looking for two climbers to nominate to attend the British Mountaineering Council’s 2010 International Sea Cliff Climbing Meet. The BMC event will be held May 9-16 at the all-new location of the Count House in Cornwall (UK), a 200-year old house perched above the granite cliff of Bosigran. The meet organizers hope to bring together climbers of all grades from around the world to “enjoy the full delights of British sea cliff climbing.”

More information about the meet can be found on theUIAA.org as well as the BMC’s event listing, but here’s a quick summary:

“Sea cliffs offer some of the most enjoyable and adventurous ‘trad’ climbing in the British Isles. The granite cliffs of Cornwall in South West England were first explored by climbers more than a century ago, and the area has developed into a climbers’ Mecca. There are well over 1,000 routes clustered around the western tip of the peninsula, providing not just the best concentration of granite climbing in Britain but also many ‘three-star’ classics on other rock types such as Greenstone and Killas Slate. There are quality routes in all grades from V Diff to E10, so something for everyone! Other attractions of the area include great pubs, Farmhouse Cream Teas and the famous Cornish pasty, so we expect to have a fantastic week’s climbing and a lot of fun besides.”

“The last summer meet in 2008 based in North Wales saw a great mix of people and abilities: Belgium climbers fond of airtime; Russians leading their first trad routes; some superb evening presentations and plenty of smiling faces at the end of each day.  The perception that BMC International Meets are for top end climbers is simply not the case.  The meets have been, and continue to be, made up of people from a whole range of climbing experiences and grades.”

- Becky McGovern, BMC

Interested? Contact Dana Richardson at drichardson@americanalpineclub.org for more information on how to apply to attend on the AAC’s behalf.

Spaces are limited, so the BMC is asking climbers to not make any concrete travel arrangements until they receive confirmation from the BMC directly. If the meet becomes over-booked, slots will be reduced to one per federation.

The government of Pakistan has announced that its bargain rates on mountaineering fees will be maintained for the 2010 climbing season. Under the discount plan, which has been in place for the past several years in an effort to lure climbers to the troubled country, there is no fee for peaks up to 6,500 meters and a sliding scale for higher peaks, topping out at $6,000 for a team of seven on K2. The fee for peaks in the Chitral, Gilgit, and Ghizer districts, other than popular Spantik, is even lower—just 20 percent of the 2010 reduced rates.

The 2010 fees for teams of up to seven climbers are:

• K2: $6,000 , plus $1,000 per additional climber
• 8,001m to 8,500m: $4,500 plus $750 per additional climber
• 7,501m to 8,000m: $2,000 plus $250 per additional climber
• 7,001m to 7,500m: $1,250 plus $150 per additional climber
• 6,501m to 7,000m: $750 plus $100 per additional climber

If you have been considering applying for grant funding from the AAC, please do not delay! The deadline for two major climbing grants, the Lyman-Spitzer Cutting Edge Award and the McNeill-Nott Award, is approaching quickly: all applications are due on or before January 1, 2010. This is a change from past years; both grants had previous application dates of March 1.

Applications should be submitted via email to Janet Miller, grants manager at the AAC office. Her contact information is below:

Janet Miller | 303-951-4565

grants@americanalpineclub.org

Application forms and instructions are available at the links above. Late applications will not be accepted and applications are for expeditions departing no later than December 31 of the current year. Please do not hesitate to call with questions.

A preview of the AAJ Online

First there was the AAJ Search, which brought you every article in the AAJ all the way back to 1929, when the first issue came out. Now the AAJ has taken its next great leap into the digital age with the AAJ Online. Here we’re hosting new reports destined for the 2010 AAJ, posted as we receive and edit them. If you’re planning your next mountain excursion or just want to know what’s new, please check us out. Right now there’s not much meat on our virtual bones, but this will change fast as the new reports keep rolling in. As the months and years go by, we’re sure to become the world’s primary resource for new route reports, just as the printed AAJ has been for the last 80 years–only now the information reaches you even faster.

Remember that the AAJ is only about new stuff: we don’t cover the umpteenth (or even the second) ascent of a route. And it’s not one of those sexy commercial sites, with paid writers fawning over or ripping into famous names. Instead we bring you the raw edge of mountain exploration, where the climbers themselves tell their own stories of how it was to go where the hand of man has never set foot. AAJ contributors are new routers from around the world, many of them not even AAC members. Our goal is to capture EVERY big new route in the world’s mountains, regardless of who climbed it.

So come check us out. And while you’re at it, have you sent us YOUR new route reports from 2009? We need them now!

Cheers,

John Harlin III

Editor, American Alpine Journal

The AAC’s annual report will be mailed to members in February, and it will include more color photos than ever. We need spectacular, exciting, and humorous climbing and mountaineering shots from your favorite climbs during 2009. If you did the trip of a lifetime this year, we want to hear about it. Send low-resolution digital images plus captions or a trip report to the editor. If your photo is chosen, we will request a high-resolution file. Thanks!

The American Alpine Club (AAC) seeks to add a dynamic member to its senior staff for the position of Major Gifts Officer. The position requires a minimum of five years of experience in development work with direct experience soliciting funds from individuals and foundations. This position will be an integral part of the AAC team as the Club continues to expand programs, grow membership and prepare for its next capital fund campaign. Exceptional candidates will have extraordinary organizational skills, a passion for the outdoors and be capable of working directly with donors. The position reports to the Executive Director and the right candidate will be a part of the senior leadership team. Resumes and cover letters should be sent electronically by January 11, 2010 to Janet Miller. A full job description is available on our website at www.americanalpineclub.org/pt/majorgiftsofficerjobdescription.

The climbing community has felt the need to band together in loss too many times this year, in ways only fellow climbers can understand. Continuing a string of tragedies, Canadian ice climber Guy Lacelle was killed in an avalanche last Thursday during the Bozeman Ice Festival. Lacelle and a partner were climbing in Hyalite Canyon, MT, participating in the Ice Breaker competition, when a party above triggered a small avalanche that pulled him off the cliff and down the ice.

As written by the Petzl Crew, of which Guy was a part, “Guy was one of the leading ice climbers in North America, responsible for many bold solo ascents in his home country of Canada and elsewhere. He was a regular at many major ice climbing events and was still pushing the limits of ice climbing until the day he died at the age of 54.” Read more of the Petzl Crew’s blog tribute, including photos and videos, here.

For more details on the accident, please read the article in last Friday’s Bozeman Daily Chronicle here.

Climbing Magazine also posted information including links to a 2008 Alpinist interview with Lacelle.

Doug Chabot, AAC member and avalanche expert, analyzed the slide and conditions in the video below, via AvalancheGuys:

Our sympathies and thoughts go to Guy’s family and climbing partners today and in the weeks ahead.