Found in Translation
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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...
Found in Translation — American Alpine Club
One Man’s Vision to Widen the Collective Knowledge of a Small Island’s Climbing Community By Holly Yu Tung Chen Photos by Shao Ping Weng Originally published in Guidebook XIII Across the Pacific, on the small island of Taiwan, climber Maurice Chen received an email from Dougald
American Alpine Club (americanalpineclub.org)
