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Climber Sets Yosemite Record, Then Alex Honnold Stole It

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    UK ClimbingU
    'At this stage I would do each move in isolation about once every ten or so attempts in good conditions' -Alex Moore on his ascent of Smiling Buttress, twelve years after Tyler Landman made the first ascent. https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=777699
  • The Line: A Great Year for Women in the Mountains

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    American Alpine ClubA
    All-women teams have been exceptionally active around the world this year. This month we’re highlighting two of them: a Slovenian women’s expedition to Zanskar, India, and an Italian pair in the Pamir Alai of Kyrygzstan. Two other highly ambitious expeditions in 2024 involved American women: Chantel Astorga, supported by an AAC Cutting Edge Grant, nearly completed a new route up Shivling in India with Fanny Schmutz; and Michelle Dvorak, armed with a McNeill-Nott Grant, got high on the unclimbed southeast buttress of Chaukhamba III, also in India, with Fay Manners, before a rockfall incident forced them down. Just this month, Babsi Zangerl made her extraordinary flash of an El Cap free route. Plenty more women’s climbs will appear in the 2025 AAJ: See the gallery above for a little preview! Our all-female expedition to Zanskar, India, was comprised of Ana Baumgartner, Urša Kešar, Patricija Verdev, and me (all from Slovenia). On August 26, we left the road with 18 porters to climb in the Lalung Valley. Our main goal was Lalung I and neighboring peaks. The day after our arrival at base camp, we explored higher up the valley. It took an entire day to make a 20-kilometer round trip on moraine and glacial terrain, and, as the weather was poor, we didn’t see much of the higher peaks. On August 31, Patricija and I climbed a new route on a granite north-northwest face not far from base camp. This buttress, which starts at around 4,200 meters, lies on the south side of the valley and rises to Peak 5,346m. One route had been climbed previously near the center of this face, by Indians Korak Sanyal and Spandan Sanyal (see AAJ 2018). Our new route, Connection (VI-), took 15 hours and involved around 1,400 meters of climbing. Before moving up to an advanced base camp, we had a nighttime visit from a bear. It was an unpleasant encounter, with the animal sniffing around our tents for food. All four climbers were happy to relocate to a bear-free advanced base at 4,800 meters. Urša had difficulties with the altitude, however, so after a couple of days she and Ana returned to base camp, where they and our cooks and liaison officer had to deal with a full-on bear saga. After more than 10 nighttime bear visits, resulting in Patricija’s tent being ripped, heaps of food stolen, and the toilet tent demolished, they managed to scare off the bears with fire and enjoy a few peaceful nights. During this period, Urša and Ana climbed two more new routes on the north-northwest face of Peak 5,332m, finishing on the northwest ridge. Meanwhile, on September 9, Patricija and I left advanced base for the east ridge of unclimbed Lalung I (6,243m), camping a little way above the start. We’d had a forecast for a good weather window, but a snowstorm on the 10th forced us to set up tent in the middle of the day and sit out the bad weather. The storm lasted all the next day, but the 12th dawned clear and we climbed late into the night. Day five on the ridge required even more determination, and it wasn’t until 1:30 a.m. that we settled down for a rest, having climbed the final difficult mixed pitches. In a moment of carelessness brought on by fatigue, we lost our tent poles to the wind and slept in the open in bivouac sacks. The next morning was foggy, making it hard to navigate, but after some snow slopes, we reached the summit at 9 a.m. on the 14th. We proceeded with a long descent along the west ridge and then five rappels on the north face to reach the glacier at 6:30 p.m. It took another eight hours to reach advanced base. Next day, we descended to base camp. Just before stepping off the moraine, we saw three silhouettes, Ana, Urša, and Freni, who brought smiles to our tired faces. We named our route Here Comes the Sun (M6+ AI5+, with around 2,000 meters of climbing). — Anja Petek, Slovenia Camilla Reggio and I met on the Eagle Team of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI) and immediately became friends, connected by our huge passion for the mountains. We decided to plan our first expedition together and ended up in Kyrgyzstan, with the intent of climbing on the incredible granite of the Ak-su Valley in the Pamir Alai mountains. We hoped to open a new route.  Walking up and down the valley in search of possible lines, we were impressed by the 500m south face of Pik 3,850m (a.k.a. the south buttress of Pik Slesova). The following morning, August 12, we brought a... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2024/11/17/the-line-a-great-year-for-women-in-the-mountains
  • Ethan Pringle Gets Real About Scary Highballs

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    GrippedG
    One of America's best boulderers talks about dealing with fear when pulling a crux high above the ground The post Ethan Pringle Gets Real About Scary Highballs appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/news/ethan-pringle-gets-real-about-scary-highballs/
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    UK ClimbingU
    UK-based charity makes mountains safely accessible to young people, aligning with Rab's values and brand heritage https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=775128
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    American Alpine ClubA
    Mark Westman has been climbing in the Alaska Range for nearly three decades and was a Denali Mountaineering Ranger for ten years. He has attempted Mt. Russell, on the southwest edge of Denali National Park, three times by three different routes over 27 years. The third time was the charm, as he and Sam Hennessey raced to the summit in a single day in late April. It was only the ninth ascent of the 11,670-foot peak, and Westman believes the line they followed may be the most reliable way to reach this elusive summit. At 9:45 a.m. on April 27, Paul Roderick dropped Sam Hennessey and me on the upper Dall Glacier, directly beneath the nearly 6,000-foot-tall east face of Mt. Russell—our objective.   We had in mind a rapid round trip. After quickly setting up a tent to stash food and bivouac gear, we departed half an hour after landing with light packs. We started up the left side of the east face, following the same line that Sam had climbed the previous spring with Courtney Kitchen and Lisa Van Sciver. On that attempt, they carried skis with the hope of descending off the summit. After 3,600 feet of snow and ice slopes, they reached the south ridge, which they found scoured down to unskiable hard ice. They retreated and skied back down to the Dall Glacier. The route Sam and I followed on the east face steepened to 50° at about mid-height, and the snow we had been booting up gave way to sustained hard névé and occasional ice—much icier conditions than what Sam and partners had found at the same spot in 2023. We continued to a flat area at 9,600 feet, near the base of the upper south ridge of the mountain. Until this point, we had climbed unroped for most of the way. The upper south ridge was the route followed by Mt. Russell’s first ascent team in 1962 (see AAJ 1963). They accessed it from the west side via an airplane landing on the Chedotlothna Glacier (which is no longer feasible because of glacial recession). This section of ridge was repeated by Dana Drummond and Freddie Wilkinson in 2017 after they pioneered a new route up the direct south face and south ridge of Russell (5,000’, AK Grade 4; see AAJ 2018). From where we intersected the ridge, there were several tricky sections of traversing across 50° ice and knife-edge ridges. We used the rope for these parts, then continued unroped for several hundred feet, easily avoiding numerous crevasses. Just beneath the summit, we reached a near-vertical wall of rime ice, surrounded by fantastically rimed gargoyle formations that spoke to the ferocious winds that typically buffet this mountain. We belayed the short bulge of rime and minutes later became only the ninth team to reach the summit, just seven hours after leaving our landing site. The peak known today as Mt. Russell appears to have been called Todzolno' Hwdighelo' (literally “river mountain”) in the Upper Kuskokwim Athabascan language. This is according to a National Park Service–sponsored study of Indigenous place names written by James Kari, professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Alaska. Today’s Mt. Russell was named for geologist Israel Cook Russell—one of founding members of the AAC. The California 14er Mt. Russell is also named for him. There wasn’t a cloud in any direction and not a breath of wind. I had made storm-plagued attempts on Russell in two different decades, and there were many other seasons where I had partners and dates lined up but never left Talkeetna due to poor weather. It was truly gratifying to reach the top of this elusive summit. Sam and I descended to the landing site in just four hours, making for an 11-hour round-trip climb and the mountain’s first one-day ascent. Paul picked us up the following morning. While all of the terrain we followed had been climbed previously, the east face and south ridge had not been linked as a singular summit route. Having attempted the now very broken northeast ridge in 1997, and having climbed most of the Wilkinson-Drummond route in 2019, I feel... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2024/9/3/the-line-mark-westman-mt-russell-and-more
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    climber-magazineC
    https://www.climber.co.uk/news/paris-2024-olympics-men-s-combined-final-roberts-takes-gold/
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    EpicTVE
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buNSYxErFEE
  • Climbing 5.13d Trad with Beaks for Pro

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    GrippedG
    https://gripped.com/news/climbing-5-13d-trad-with-beaks-for-pro/