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Everest Glacier Collapse and Drone Emergency

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  • American Alpine ClubA

    The Huayhuash Is Still Open

    General News climbing
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    American Alpine ClubA
    The mountain’s scale, as seen through my own eyes, terrified me. Film and photographs, a 60-year-old trip report, and even the topo sketches I had stared at for hours before arriving—none of them captured the size, or the exposure, or the weight of it. Lying in its eastern valley, listening to the static hiss of rain against nylon, I couldn’t sleep. I had been catfished by my own dreams. Any confidence I had built up in the Cordillera Blanca now felt suspect. Bootpacks and snow anchors set in place by mountain guides, lively refugios and high camps, and broader terrain that was mostly walkable; these were all crutches that fed into my delusion, now taken away by just one close glimpse at Jirishanca. On June 2, 2025, after a few hours of tossing and turning in my sleeping bag, I set off with my partner Eric Kanopkin to climb Jirishanca Chico, a 5,400-meter peak in the Cordillera Huayhuash range of Peru. The grassy hills that rolled up to Niñacocha, the meltwater of the Rondoy Glacier, were flooded with rainwater and cow manure. Our double boots squished loudly as we went up the valley, waking and startling cattle as we passed. We were indiscreet spies under the cover of midnight’s darkness, clambering across no-man’s-land toward what we assumed was our acclimatization objective. The first time I had seen the Huayhuash was back in 2024, from the popular hilltop sport climbing crag of Hatun Machay. I was there with Maxwell Hodges, a friend who helped introduce me to the climbing life—as well as to the Cordillera Blanca. That day, we were sunning ourselves on rock, a happy respite from slogging up the Blanca’s sloping glaciers. “Why don’t we head there?” I had asked him, pointing toward the jagged, snowcapped massif of the Huayhuash. All we knew then of that place was the famous climbing accident recounted in Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void. While descending a 6,000-meter peak called Siula Grande in 1985, Simpson broke his leg and fell into a crevasse, which ultimately resulted in one of the most epic survival stories in mountaineering. Max just laughed. We weren’t ready. He was right; we could barely lead the bolted 5.10s at Hatun without our legs shaking. Throughout a season of climbing the high peaks of the Cordillera Blanca and another year of climbing in Colorado, I could not stop thinking about the Huayhuash. Max and I climbed tourist peaks like Chopicalqui, Tocllaraju, and Pisco, and since we were always surrounded by other climbers and guides from all over the world, it was easy enough to mimic the common patterns of ascension even on our dirtbag budget. We followed the well-worn paths made by pack mules and beater taxis. Throughout our adventures, I kept my head up to admire the condors, untethered by the ground’s limits, as we were. The Huayhuash represented something different to me. Unlike the Blanca, it hosts no regular climbing activity; it’s harder to reach and has a higher concentration of more technical peaks. The number of climbers coming into the range each year can be counted on one hand. A significant reason for that lies in its history. The Huayhuash was closed off to climbing in the late 1980s into the ‘90s, as a result of the violent hegemony of a Maoist terrorist group called El Sendero Luminoso. Foreign climbers were turned away from the remote area for years, and the Huayhuash faded off of ticklists. Even after its reopening, the Huayhuash brought in limited climbing activity, while the Blanca, just hours to its north, expanded in popularity. After leaving Peru in 2024, I was still drawn to the Huayhuash, but not just for the austere beauty of its mushroom-capped ridges and dramatic summit pinnacles. The mystique that shrouded the range, the lingering stigma among climbers, was what really captivated me. It was simply bizarre to me that two ranges, the Huayhuash and the Blanca, so close and similar in geography, could be perceived so differently by climbers. Stoked, ambitious, and just out of college, I was determined to go find out for myself. Once the sun rose, warm colors illuminated a world of winter above us. Eric and I were finally on the Rondoy Glacier, heading toward Chico’s northeast face. To climber’s right, Jirishanca’s north ridge was a sweeping ramp of snow and ice into the golden and pink heavens. That was the ultimate route that we were preparing for on Chico, a goal that ironically seemed farther out of reach the closer we got to it. I was worried that I was already in over my head, but my fear was dissipating from the restless night before. Dwarfed by the apu, the Quechua’s mountain gods, I was moment... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2026/2/15/the-huayhuash-is-still-open
  • Thrill SyndicateT

    Secure, Comfortable Harnesses - Zipline Harnesses built for comfort and security.

    General Climbing adventurepark safetyfirst thrillride amusementpark climbing
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    Thrill SyndicateT
    Secure, Comfortable Harnesses - Zipline Harnesses built for comfort and security. Protect every adventure—explore our top picks for operators.https://zurl.co/3ebBO #adventurepark #safetyfirst #thrillride #amusementpark #climbing
  • American Alpine ClubA

    The Line—Reward and Risk on Kaqur Kangri

    General News climbing
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    American Alpine ClubA
    Three teams will be honored with Piolets d’Or in Italy this December, and all three contributed feature articles about their climbs to the 2025 American Alpine Journal (AAJ). Tom Livingstone wrote about his and Aleš Česen’s new route on Gasherbrum III in Pakistan; Dane Steadman described the first ascent of Yashkuk Sar, also in Pakistan, with August Franzen and Cody Winckler; and Spencer Gray told the story of climbing the southwest arête of Kaqur Kangri in Nepal with Ryan Griffiths. There’s a lot to love about Spencer’s AAJ piece —it documents an amazing ascent. But we were also struck by the final passage, in which he reflects on the inherent and sometimes insidious risks of Himalayan alpinism. No one got hurt on the climb of 6,859-meter Kaqur Kangri, but afterward Spencer tallied 20-plus minor incidents that each could have ended very badly. Honest self-assessments like this are essential to a long life in the mountains, so we’ve shared Spencer’s thoughts here for readers to consider in light of their own climbing. Objectives like the southwest arête of Kaqur Kangri used to be what most climbing was: trying something kind of hard, an inconvenient distance from home, and relying on imagination as much as effort to turn a thing dreamt into a thing done. There are still plenty of places to contrive that same experience. We just have to look harder—and be willing to court risk in an unpredictable operating environment.  Our team didn’t have what we’d consider a close call, but in debriefing, I still counted 23 discrete times when the risk ticked up. A mule nearly broke my knee with a kick when I tried to bring it into camp one morning. On our first day of climbing, we hustled up a ramp that was probably at the outside edge of the ricochet zone of the upper serac band. Two days later, Ryan [Griffiths] and I both simultaneously realized that we were pushing our unroped luck on low-angle but hard-frozen talus above the west face. “If we slip here, it’s to the bottom, eh?” I said. Of four minor rockfall incidents, we mitigated two by our choice of protected belays and bivvies. Another was friendly fire: On rappel, I chucked a baseball-sized rock so the ropes wouldn’t dislodge it. But I misaimed, and the rock bounced down the snow slope and nailed Ryan in the shoulder. I reasoned that Ryan had probably done something in a prior life to deserve getting punched in the clavicle. He was less sure. On day three, below the snowfield, we pulled through suspended, stacked blocks in a roof that would have chopped the rope had they dislodged. On the upper headwall, my ice tool tethers got tangled behind a cam after I had campused out a diagonal rail. I couldn’t reverse the move, and I couldn’t continue until I had unthreaded the tools. Half growling, half screaming, I locked off on one arm, frontpoints screeching, and freed myself. When he followed, Ryan simply lowered out and jugged.  On the descent, Ryan and I had probably our riskiest moment when we crossed a 40-foot-wide wind slab partway down the upper northwest face. It appeared suddenly, a shallow pocket of cross-loaded danger in an otherwise stable snowpack. The tension on the slope and the soft, hollow thump as our boots and ice tools pressed through the snow put us both on edge. But with no other signs of failure or propagation, and a morning of downclimbing a similar aspect and angle above us, we each judged it safe enough to proceed. An hour before we regained the base of the mountain, fed up with navigating the messy corners of the final glacier, we briefly but obtusely committed to soloing steep glacial ice, embedded with crushed pebbles, as we traversed 15 feet above the bottom of a closed crevasse. We were spurred on by our friend Matt’s tiny light in the distance and the promise of fresh Snickers. Perhaps a week on the mountain and the tedious descent had dulled our nose for risk.  Three days later, we stopped at Chyargo La on the trek back out and took in our final view of Kaqur. I crouched beneath fluttering prayer flags to lounge against a rock, my fingers getting sticky pulling globs of gulab jamun out of a can we’d saved until now for a treat. Kaqur’s summit seracs glinted in the midday sun from what seemed like a very long ways away. Matt and Ryan laughed as I passed them the can for a shot of syrup to wash it all down. https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/11/18/the-linereward
  • BørgeF

    Is there any app that lets you use the separate BT earpieces (like AirPods etc) to communicate directly from one to the other?

    General Climbing stealthisidea climbing
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    BørgeF
    Is there any app that lets you use the separate BT earpieces (like AirPods etc) to communicate directly from one to the other?You connect them to one phone, as normal, but then two people have each one in one ear and can talk to each other?I was with a friend to a climbing hall, and even though it was a "quiet" time, it was still hard to talk when one person is far up on the wall and the other was securing you on the floor. Thought this could be a perfect solution.#StealThisIdea #climbing
  • HowNOT2H

    3d printed carabiners

    Videos climbing hownot2
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    HowNOT2H
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CrBUEtubaM
  • American Alpine ClubA

    Guidebook XIV—An Interview with Dougald MacDonald

    General News climbing
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    American Alpine ClubA
    How would you describe the scope of the work that goes into making the American Alpine Journal (AAJ)? Dougald MacDonald: Producing the AA J is a year-round effort that involves literally hundreds of people. The actual “staff” of the AAJ (who are all part-timers and volunteers) includes more than 15 people, and each year we work with roughly 300 individual climbers and photographers to share their stories. The book goes to press in late April, so the peak of the cycle is in March and April. But the work on the following year’s edition starts immediately, plus we prepare and upload online stories all year round. AND we produce The Cutting Edge podcast and the monthly Line newsletter. What’s the history of the AAJ? How has it changed over the years? DM: The AAJ is coming up on its 100th birthday, and unsurprisingly it has changed quite a lot over the years. It started out as much more of a Club publication, telling the stories of AAC members’ adventures. In the 1950s, with the rise of Himalayan climbing, the book started to become much more international. But it was really Ad Carter—who edited the AAJ for 35 years, starting in the 1960s—who created the wide-ranging, international publication it is today. We no longer focus mostly on the activities of AAC members—though we’re very happy to tell those stories when we can—but instead try to document all significant long routes and mountain exploration anywhere in the world, by climbers from every country. For both the AAJ and Accidents in North American Climbing (ANAC), the most significant changes of the last 10 to 15 years have been 1) the introduction of color photography throughout both books and 2) the launch of the searchable online database of every AAJ and ANAC article ever published. What’s an example of a unique challenge the editors have to deal with when making the AAJ? DM: One challenge is that we come out so long after many of the climbs actually happened. So, readers may have seen something about any given climb several times, in news reports and social media posts and even video productions. But the AAJ has never been in the breaking news business. Instead, we aim to provide perspective and context. Perspective in that we don’t have any vested interest that might slant a story one way or another, and context on the history and geography that helps readers really understand the significance of a climb, how it relates to what’s been done before, and what other opportunities might be out there. Another big challenge is language barriers, since we work with people from all over the world. We’re fortunate to work in English, which so many people around the world use these days. We also use skilled translators for some stories, and online translation tools have improved dramatically in recent years. But there’s still a lot of back-and-forth with authors to ensure we’re getting everything just right. What’s an example report that was really exciting for you to edit from the last few years? DM: For me, personally, the coolest stories are the ones that teach me about an area of the world—or a moment in climbing history—that I knew nothing about before starting to work on a story. In the upcoming book, for example, we have stories about winter climbing in Greece (who knew?) and a mountain range in Venezuela that’s gorgeous and has peaks over 16,000 feet. Unfortunately, that range is rapidly losing its snow cover and its small glaciers. AAJ senior editor Lindsay Griffin, who is editing the story, did some cool climbs in the range in 1985, and the difference between his photos and those from today is shocking. Are there any big differences in process between making the AAJ and ANAC? DM: The biggest differences are just the scale and scope of the two books: The AAJ is a nearly 400-page book that tries to cover the entir... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/5/19/guidebook-xivan-interview-with-dougald-macdonald
  • EpicTVE

    Placing Trad Gear Like a Pro

    Videos climbing
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    EpicTVE
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl22_7WPYjw
  • GrippedG

    20-Year-Old Climbs Three V16s in Under Two Weeks

    General News climbing
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    GrippedG
    Francesco Berardino is quickly making a name for himself in the world of bouldering The post 20-Year-Old Climbs Three V16s in Under Two Weeks appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/news/20-year-old-climbs-three-v16s-in-under-two-weeks/