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The 70 Most Significant Alpine Climbs of 2023

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17 Sept 2024, 13:00

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    General News climbing 29 days ago
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    Originally published in Guidebook XIII Across the Pacific, on the small island of Taiwan, climber Maurice Chen received an email from Dougald MacDonald, the Executive Editor of the American Alpine Club. It was July 2024, and the summer air hung as heavy as mist. Attached to the email was a large document: the full version of the 2024 Accidents in North American Climbing (ANAC). Chen called his two colleagues at the Taiwan Outdoor Climbers’ Coalition (TOCC), Matt Robertson and Ta Chi Wang. Together, they began their meticulous work—marking pages, circling terms, and discussing any accident relevant to Taiwanese climbing in obsessive detail. The task ahead would be long and tedious. Taiwan is an island shaped like a yam, floating between the South and East China Seas. It sits in the shadow of two superpowers, one threatening to occupy it and another half-heartedly protecting it. A young island by geological standards, it was formed by the collision of two tectonic plates. The island is 89 miles wide and 250 miles long, with its eastern half stitched to its western half by a spine of mountain ranges. Among these ranges are 151 peaks taller than 10,000 feet, with the tallest, Jade Mountain, standing just shy of 13,000 feet. Taiwan is a land of sea and sky. The island’s diverse climate shifts from coastal tide pools to alpine tundra and back to tide pools in less than a hundred miles. Thanks to these rich natural landscapes, the Taiwanese have always embraced outdoor activities such as hiking, mountaineering, diving, biking, surfing, and climbing. The first mountaineering clubs of Taiwan were formed as early as 1905. Chen and Robertson belonged to Taiwan’s third generation of climbers, Wang to the second. The first generation of Taiwanese climbers were born during the Japanese occupation, and were early-century mountaineers, tackling the many tall peaks with traditional expedition and siege-style strategies. Mountaineering and hiking gained mainstream attention when a list of a hundred notable mountains was published in 1972, aptly named “Taiwan’s Hundred Mountains.” The serious Taiwanese mountaineer aspired to climb all hundred. By the late 1970s, mountaineering boots were the go-to climbing shoe, but tales of the Stonemasters had floated across the Pacific. Wang remembers reading an issue of Climbing Magazine that his friends and brought back from the States, but without the internet, information passed slowly. The climbing scene lagged behind the Americans and Europeans by about half a decade. Gradually, Taiwanese climbers began distinguishing rock climbing from mountaineering. When Chen began climbing in the 1990s, free climbing—primarily trad climbing—was already widespread. By the time Robertson arrived in Taiwan in 2002, sport climbing had just begun to gain traction. In the mid-2010s, the indoor climbing scene boomed, and the number of gyms tripled. Due to the limited real estate in the maze-like Taiwanese cities, most of these facilities were bouldering gyms, which gave rise to the fourth generation of Taiwanese climbers, predominantly boulderers. Published annually since 1948, Accidents in North American Climbing documents the year’s most significant and teachable climbing accidents. Get it annually as an AAC member. Each membership is critical to the AAC’s work: advocating for climbing access and natural landscapes, offering essential knowledge to the climbing community, and supporting our members with our rescue benefit, discounts, grants and more.  Chen and Robertson met at Long Dong (meaning “Dragon’s Cave”), a seacliff climbing area on the northern end of the island. Climbers have compared Long Dong with the Shawangunks in New York or Clear Creek Canyon in Colorado, but Wang waves away those comparisons—it cannot be compared because the serenity of home is an incomparable experience. Seacliffs rise out of the Pacific and waves crash behind the belayer, requiring not only knowledge of the rocks but knowledge of the tides. The lines are short and stout, punchy, getting the grade in less than 50 feet in most places. This was before the first climbing gym in Taiwan had opened, and the pair collaborated to pu... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/2/4/guidebook-xiiivolunteer-spotlight
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    The Dirtbag is Dead, the second version by The Dead Dirtbag, Mike Handzlik. Stickers are available to order now. Shirts and hoodies coming soon. (Including our first ever tie die.) Order stickers here: https://shop.climbingzine.com/collections/stickers https://climbingzine.com/the-dirtbag-is-dead-2/
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    Sean Bailey has made the sixth ascent of Shawn Raboutou’s bouldering testpiece Alphane in Switzerland https://www.climber.co.uk/news/sean-bailey-adds-alphane-font-9a-to-cv/
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    A film on accomplished climber Ashima Shiraishi took home a prize for best feature length The post 2024 Banff Mountain Film Festival Winners appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/profiles/2024-banff-mountain-film-festival-winners/
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    Canada has added a new sport to its Paralympic program smartly getting ahead of 2028 https://paralympicsportsnews.wordpress.com/2024/10/23/climbing-escalade-canada-gains-canadian-paralympic-committee-membership/ #Climbing #Paralympics
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    Jimmy Chin just found the boot of Andrew "Sandy" Irvine—who disappeared on Everest alongside George Mallory in 1924—at the foot of Everest's North Face. It isn't answering as many questions as we'd hoped. https://www.climbing.com/news/sandy-irvine-remains-found-everest/
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    The Squamish sport climb is one of the most iconic single-pitch lines in North America The post Jun Shibanuma Climbs Dreamcatcher 5.14d appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/news/jun-shibanuma-climbs-dreamcatcher-5-14d/
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    Summer has officially arrived and climbers are turning their attentions to northerly latitudes, higher elevations, and lofty peaks. This month we feature two accidents that took place last summer on Teewinot (12,330 feet) in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. While these accidents differ in immediate cause and final outcome, they share a common origin: the use of hiking-specific applications for beta and route-finding, versus using climbing-specific resources. STRANDED | Inexperience With Snow Climbing Grand Teton National Park, Teewinot Mountain On July 14 at 3:45 p.m., National Park Service personnel received a cell phone call from two young climbers stuck on Teewinot (12,330 feet). The male climbers, aged 19 and 20 years, reported that they were on a snowfield north of the Idol and Worshiper rock formations. They were carrying ice axes but did not know how to use them. They also reported that the snow was soft and they were unable to descend any further. The incident commander coached them on proper descent practices. The climbers then reported over the phone that, despite this assistance, they still needed a rescue. Two NPS climbing rangers were deployed, and rescuers got to the stranded climbers at 6 p.m. The distressed climbers were lowered on rope systems until they reached the bottom of the snowfield and a dry trail at 7:30 p.m.  After resting and rewarming for 45 minutes, the climbers requested that they be allowed to descend at their own slower pace to the parking lot. There have been multiple similar instances of climbers in the Tetons being unprepared for their objectives, both during 2023 and in previous years. The summer climbing season in the range often starts with snow-covered peaks and ends with almost exclusively rock climbing terrain. During transition periods, climbers need to be prepared for the current conditions and not the ideal conditions. In recent seasons, rangers have noticed an increase in technical climbing routes being listed on hiking-specific applications and websites. Many 4th- and 5th-class rock climbs with high risk and fall potential are listed incorrectly as hikes. Climbers are reminded to gather their route information from fellow climbers and climbing-specific resources. (Source: Grand Teton National Park Search and Rescue Report.) FATAL FALL | Climbing Unroped Grand Teton National Park, Teewinot Mountain On August 10, a team of nine climbers were attempting to climb Teewinot via the East Face (low 5th class). Upon nearing the summit, a 47-year-old female climber in the group fell about 150 feet to her death. The team decided to send one climber down to get help, while the rest stayed in place and called for help via cell phone. NPS personnel were contacted at 7:30 p.m. After a helicopter reconnaissance, given the late hour and waning daylight, the decision was made to send a ground team to assist the stranded climbers. Four climbing rangers were deployed at 10:30 p.m., and they arrived on scene at 2:15 a.m. and spent the rest of the night with the climbers. During the morning of August 11, three helicopter shuttles brought the rescuers and climbers back to the valley. A short-haul operation then retrieved the deceased climber. ANALYSIS Several factors contributed to this unfortunate accident. Editor’s Note: While preparing these reports for the soon-to-be-released 2024 Accidents in North American Climbing, I found several popular hiking apps featured the East Face of Teewinot as a webpage entry (see above). The most disturbing representation was on AllTrails.com. On the web page for Teewinot, the climb was referred to as a “trail” not once, but three times. The strongest warning given was to “proceed cautiously” on a route that “should only be attempted by experienced adventurers.” In contrast, the actual trail reviews posted by members, revealed a starkly different reality: I went further and downloaded the AllTrails app. Therein, Teewinot was appropriately described as a route requiring “technical mountaineering skills and equipment” adding that it is “the most dangerous in the Teton range…” I don’t know exactly when this content change was ma... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2024/7/9/the-prescriptionjuly