The AAC will send two lucky members to this year’s Second International Trad Climbing Meeting organized by the Club Alpino Accademico Italiano (CAAI). The CAAI, with the sponsorship of Alpine Club of Italy, is organizing this international event—similar to the American Alpine Club’s International Climbers’ Meet—in Ceresole Reale, Orco Valley, near Torino, … Read more…
Member and climber scientist John All wrote to us about an upcoming Peruvian expedition. The AAC is supporting a humanitarian expedition to Peru this summer that combines mountain conservation with science objectives to help protect the peaks that we all love. A small team of sixteen researchers, university students, and … Read more…
In the autumn of 2008, American Alpine Journal Editor John Harlin III and the AAC organized a gathering of magazine and journal editors from around the world and dubbed the meeting the “First Editors’Summit.” Editors of print journals and websites gathered in Colorado, then Utah for climbing and discussion on … Read more…
AAC Member David Falt and his partner Helen Manancourt recently completed a bold repeat of the Swiss Route on Cima Ovest. This peak, part of the Tre Cime trio, features a handful of routes up its north face. David and Helen climbed until dark, and then spent an unplanned bivy … Read more…
Last week we posted some snippets from Steve Swenson’s blog posts on the first ascent of Saser Kangri II. The team consisted of Swenson (the current AAC President), past club President Mark Richey, and renowned alpine climber Freddie Wilkinson. Mark recently provided the AAC a full write-up, complete with pictures! … Read more…
The Zack Martin Breaking Barriers grant committee has announced the 2010 recipient of this major AAC grant: Jonathan Mingle from Vermont will travel to Zanskar, India, next winter with dual humanitarian and ski mountaineering objectives. Mingle and his partners will trek into the mountains on the frozen Zanskar River and … Read more…
Check out video #4 on the Vertical Carnival dispatches from Turkey, profiling TNF athlete, AAC member, and first-to-put-up v16 Daniel Woods. As always, stunning video work by Renan Ozturk. Thanks to the Vertical Carnival team for letting us reproduce it here. FREE RANGE TURKEY_dispatch #4 from camp4 collective on Vimeo.
Front Range Section Chair Chris Pruchnic and a group of others made a trek to Ouray in January. He hopes to make it a yearly event for Front Range members. Here’s his story… Ten of us traveled from Denver to Ouray, making a pilgrimage to the city of ice and … Read more…
Last spring AAC member and Wisconsin veterinarian Lance Fox taught 16-time Everest summiter Phurba Tashi Sherpa to deworm his 200 yaks, improving their health and increasing their yield of milk. (Fox also climbed Everest, summiting on May 21.) Encouraged by this success, Fox and Himalayan Experience leader Russell Brice are … Read more…
Today we’re pointing you over to the blog of members Joe Puryear and David Gottlieb. Past Lyman Spitzer Grant recipients, Joe and David are currently in Nepal and putting up some incredible routes. The best part? Their reports have the kind of photos that make it hard to be sitting … Read more…
AAC member and Mountain Fellowship recipient Walker Mackey reports on his alpine-style ascent of the Kearney-Knight Route (850m, 5.10 A3) on the Central Tower of Paine in February 2010, possibly only the second ascent of this route. Mackey has now climbed all three of the Torres del Paine. I had … Read more…
Longtime AAC member Jay Smith describes his recent trip to Chile and an astounding rock formation he climbed there: Over several days and two separate trips, Jim Turner, Jim Donini, Jake Moritz, and I established three routes on a La Piramide in January 2010. This is a Devils Tower–like formation … Read more…
Make some popcorn, pop open a frosty beverage, and settle in for half an hour in front of the computer. This video trip report is well worth your time. Mason Earle, a 2009 AAC Mountain Fellowship winner, traveled to Chile’s Torres del Paine in January and February with Britons Pete … Read more…
Terror Peak is an imposing hunk of granite just south of Milford Sound, New Zealand. It is fairly remote, and was only first climbed in 2008. The first ascent was done by Hugh Barnard and Martin Wilson with their route War on Terror, grade 21/10d. My partner, Nick Flyvberg and … Read more…
AAC Member Vicki Young tells the story of her family’s recent climb in Pinnacles National Monument. What did you put up last weekend? Tell it here. January at home in the California Sierra can mean snow and cold. January in Pinnacles National Monument (just outside of Soledad, California) can mean … Read more…
This spring, when AAC member Troy Bacon leads a small group up Denali’s west buttress, the climbers won’t just be thinking about the route and the weather—they’ll be thinking about a Montana Highway Patrol trooper named Michael Haynes who was killed by a drunk driver last year. Bacon will be … Read more…
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 … Read more…
Two English expats have launched a website called Gunung Bagging, featuring a list of all the mountains and volcanoes in Indonesia with 1,000 meters or more of prominence. (Gunung means “mountain” in Indonesia.) The website eventually will include hiking tips, photographs, and route descriptions for all of the peaks, and … Read more…
Of the 40,000 people who travel to 19,334-foot Kilimanjaro each year, half to three-quarters never reach the summit. Medical issues, including acute mountain sickness and gastro-intestinal problems, are at the root of many failed attempts. Hoping to address these issues and thus allow more climbers to succeed on Africa’s highest … Read more…
The fifth edition of Alpine Briefs, an occasional online newsletter from AAJ editors Kelly Cordes and Dougald MacDonald, is now live: Alpine starts, a new Zion wall route, first ascents in Newfoundland, whipper videos, and much more.
Young climbers Dustin English, Josh Hoeschen, and Todd Tumolo won 2009 Mountain Fellowships from the AAC for exploratory climbing on a rock peak by the Kahiltna Glacier, west of the Pika Glacier in Alaska. But things didn’t go exactly as planned this summer, as Josh Hoeschen reports below. The team … Read more…
AAC Mountain Fellowship winners Joe Forrester and Jeremy Roop, both 25, have just returned from an excellent adventure in the small African nation of Malawi, where they completed the first free ascent of one route and established a second on the 5,000-foot-plus granite slabs of Chambe Peak. Scoripions, snakes, bloodthirsty … Read more…
The irrepressible Rob Pizem sent us this trip report from a desert crack-climbing adventure in September along the Green River in Utah. Most of the time when you prepare for a climbing trip, you pore over guidebooks, look at photos, and talk to everyone you know about what climbs you … Read more…
A while back, we reported on the Afghan team attempting to climb their country’s highest peak, Noshaq. Check out the video below for the story of their expedition and summit celebration. Congratulations to this team on a very important climb for the country of Afghanistan. http://www.france24.com/en/20091006-summit-hope-afghanistan-rock-climbing-whakan-mountain-expedition
AAC members have taken advantage of good late-season conditions to climb two new routes in the Tetons. In August, Paul Rachele and Landon Wiedenman noticed a new smear of ice on the Enclosure, to the right of the Visionquest Couloir, a climb that branches right from the famous Black Ice … Read more…