Sea to Summit

Bristol Bay to Mendenhall Towers

By Sierra McGivney

Photos by Jessica Anaruk

Originally published in Guidebook XIII

Jessica Anaruk and Micah Tedeschi spent the short summer season of Alaska on separate drift boats for sockeye salmon. Their days were long and filled with hours of manual labor, setting the net on the ocean and picking fish. It was not uncommon for Anaruk to work 16 hours and get around three to four hours of sleep most nights—her captain was an aggressive fisher. But at the end of their season, they were trading in their XTRATUF boots for climbing shoes and, powered by the AAC’s Catalyst Grant, heading to the big walls of the Mendenhall Towers, seven granite towers that rise high above the surrounding Mendenhall Glacier in southeast Alaska.

Anaruk and Tedeschi met while living in Durango, Colorado. A 24-hour car ride to El Potrero Chico, Mexico, with mutual friends solidified their friendship. After a week and a half of climbing on limestone in the desert, the origins of this expedition were born. Tedeschi was intrigued by Anaruk’s experience of commercial fishing in Alaska. Their conversations poured like concrete, solidifying when spoken. They would spend the upcoming summer fishing and then go on a climbing trip afterward. A unique pairing of sea and land.

“My goal throughout my life is to get to know different parts of Alaska, and [in] this season in my life, the mountains of Southeast Alaska are drawing me in. I intend to create a relationship with this part of Alaska that I admire deeply,” wrote Jessica Anaruk in her grant application.

A few summers ago, Anaruk was interning in southeast Alaska. She spent a lot of time on the water gazing at the surrounding mountains, dreaming of climbing on the tall peaks. Her passion for Alaska’s fierce oceans and grand mountains is a deep fire that runs through her.

“I think it’s fun to go to all these different places and to see the vast difference of the mountains ... and just to get to know it more and connect to the land,” said Anaruk.

They embarked on a training trip to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in May of 2024. Since they would encounter unfamiliar terrain in Alaska, they chose The Scenic Cruise (1,700’, 13 pitches, 5.10d), a route that was longer and more challenging than the routes they planned to climb on the Mendenhall Towers.

After that, their summer at sea began, and there was no climbing in sight.

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Photo by Jessica Anaruk.

Growing up in Akiachak and Anchorage, Alaska, as well as in Oregon, Jessica Anaruk was always on the water. Jessica is Yup’ik from the Akiachak community. Every summer, she and her family returned to their fish camp on a slough of the Kuskokwim River to subsistence fish for salmon, fishing for personal, family, and community consumption.

“Returning to commercial fish[ing] is a way I’m able to express this part of myself while also making an income. I learn something new about the land, the work itself, as well as myself every time I return,” said Anaruk.

In contrast, sometimes climbing feels like being alone at sea. “Being an Indigenous woman in climbing is definitely not something I see very often,” reflected Anaruk.

They fished almost every tide, twice a day. Bristol Bay is home to six major pristine water systems and 31 federally recognized tribes, including the Central Yup’ik, Alutiiq/ Sugpiaq, and Dena’ina. The bay is divided into five management districts; each opens and closes to fishing for periods of time. This allows salmon to lay eggs upriver, repopulat- ing and continuing to thrive so fishing remains sustainable. The district Tedeschi was fishing in would open for 12 hours and then close for another 12 hours, allowing more time to rest and relax.

In contrast, Anaruk’s captain and district allowed for more aggressive fishing. It wasn’t uncommon for Anaruk to work 16-hour days picking and setting the net. Despite the exhausting labor, the early-morning sunrises, the two-hour-long sunsets, and seeing bears roaming the beach keep Anaruk coming back.

“What sustains me is how it continually connects me to my culture, the land, salmon, and people,” said Anaruk.

Physically, commercial fishing doesn’t translate much into climbing beyond picking fish out of the net, which requires hand strength. But the mental aspect prepares you for long, arduous ascents on big walls. During unpredictable weather, the sky spits rain sideways, soaking the boat’s inhabitants while they scramble around picking and setting the net, adapting to any and all conditions.

“You are fishing for long periods of time, and it’s cold, and you’re tired, so I feel like that translates well, on the wall, [where] you’re also tired and cold but also trying to have a good attitude,” said Anaruk.

The long days of midnight sun on the ocean began to shorten, and on August 5, 2024, they walked into the helicopter outfitter. Fifteen minutes after loading the helicopter, they were on the Mendenhall Glacier.

“I think it’s the closest thing to teleportation that exists,” said Tedeschi.

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Photo by Jessica Anaruk.

The helicopter dropped them off at the base of the fifth tower, and their first objective was the South Buttress (1,200’, 10 pitches, IV 5.10a) on the third tower, about a half mile to the west. This was Tedeschi’s first time on a glacier, and Anaruk had limited glacier travel experience. So the Extra Tough Salmon Sisters—their new nickname, inspired by the classic Alaskan boots with fish and octopuses printed on the inside—sat down and got to work on their own glacier travel school. Tedeschi strapped microspikes to his sneakers, the only other shoes he had, since he had come straight from Bristol Bay. Like many expeditions, the pair soon found themselves well aware of the depth of knowledge they didn’t possess. They quickly dove into filling the gap by watching YouTube videos on glacier travel and practicing mock rescue drills.

Along the way, they met Clay, Sam, and Brandon, another group of climbers on the glacier. They warned the Extra Tough Salmon Sisters that the bergschrund at the base of the South Buttress was a bit sketchy. They had just climbed the South Buttress and had broken some of the ice at the base, so conditions were questionable.

This didn’t faze them. The next day, to mitigate the risk, Tedeschi started off by climbing a 5.9 to the left of the main route, and connected it to the first pitch of the South Buttress. The two enjoyed a day of stellar climbing on granite in the Alaskan alpine.

The higher up the two climbed, the better the rock quality was. As expected in the Alaskan alpine, the lower pitches had a fair bit of loose, muddy rock. Not all pitches were 5.10; they ranged from 4th-class terrain to 5.10, so some pitches were more exciting than others. Anaruk loved pitch seven; it was exhilarating for her to be so high up on the tower on a challenging pitch. Tedeschi worked his way through a steep headwall with a splitter crack on one of the last pitches.

Photo by Jessica Anaruk.

“Those upper headwall pitches were absolutely bullet rock, really exposed and just really incredible climbing,” said Tedeschi.

There is no topo for the South Buttress, and the main beta for the route is a limited description on Mountain Project. They spent several hours searching for the 5th-class route to the summit, and once they had found it and summited, they began a very involved series of rappels. By the time they were back on the Mendenhall Glacier, the sun was setting, and they had been en route for 16 hours.

That night, they sat in their tent discussing whether they should do another route tomorrow, and deal with getting only five hours of sleep. They would have to start ahead of another group and be down in time to be picked up by their helicopter.

They heard the other group getting ready in the morning and kicked it into high gear. They packed up camp and hopped on the Solva Buttress (1000’, 10 pitches, IV 5.8). The first section proved scrambly, flowy, and more relaxed than the day before. Halfway through the climb, Tedeschi pulled out gummy worms. A smile spread across Anaruk’s face, despite being worn down and tired. It was the perfect surprise. The day was spent having good conversations, laughing, and moving through fun and easy terrain.

From the summit, the Extra Tough Salmon Sisters looked out at endless glaciers with granite peaks sticking out and the ocean not too far away. Once back on the glacier, they enjoyed Modelos and a charcuterie board while waiting for the helicopter. A deep sense of satisfaction settled in.

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Photos by Jessica Anaruk.

Alpine climbing is not something Anaruk’s family and community think about. This trip transcended climbing for Anaruk. It was a way to show her family and community that you can make anything happen. Challenging expeditions inspire Anaruk to keep pushing herself.

Anaruk would love to connect with other Indigenous women in the climbing space and usher in more representation within the climbing community. Even though she is not from southeast Alaska, she believes connecting to and protecting the land is extremely valuable, especially doing so through an Indigenous lens. She also believes that climbers should consider consulting the area’s Indigenous communities when making decisions that impact the land they are climbing on.

Tedeschi’s reflection was interwoven with Anaruk’s. Most of Tedeschi’s climbing partners look like him. Anaruk is a skilled, competent climbing partner who brings a different lived experience from Tedeschi.

“I found it to be a cool outlet to express myself too because I am queer, and it’s not something I talk about often within the climbing community. I’m straight passing, so it’s just not a conversation I ever have with my male climbing partners. It was cool to be on the glacier with Jess and just be ourselves,” said Tedeschi.

They brought nail polish and painted their nails on the glacier. It was simple, but they felt they could be unabashedly themselves. They met three women on the Mendenhall Glacier— Keisha, Kaitlin, and Bailey, who had each climbed there many times before—in addition to another women’s team.

“There were more women on the glacier than men that day, and it was cool changing what is considered the norm in these spaces,” said Tedeschi.

Two all-women teams, Tedeschi, a queer man, and Anaruk, an Indigenous woman, were the majority on the glacier, a space that historically hasn’t been full of people like them. For Anaruk and Tedeschi, it was deeply impactful for their expedition to be part of the change they want to see in the climbing community.

It was a trip about reveling: reveling in the endless days Tedeschi and Anaruk spent on Alaska’s ocean, and how those days cascaded into sunsets on top of rock towers and poured into long nights filled with dancing colors.

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Found in Translation

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 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.

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Zy Li on Captain Ahab, Music Hall. Photo by Shao Ping Weng.

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.

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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. 

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Scenery of Long Dong. Photo by Shao Ping Weng.

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 publish the second bilingual edition of Rock Climbing Taiwan: Sport Climbing & Trad at Long Dong. Robertson had recently ejected from the corporate sphere, trading in neatly pressed suits for a harness and patched-up pants. Chen, enamored with climbing and wishing to contribute to the community, lent Robertson his background in graphic design. Wang, a prolific and early developer of Long Dong, contributed his extensive knowledge of the area’s history, first ascents, and geology to the book.

Around then, Robertson told Chen about the yearly publication of accident reports by the American Alpine Club. Chen was intrigued. Climbing, being an inherently dangerous sport, had its share of accidents in Taiwan, but these incidents were typically managed by individual climbing clubs and were rarely made publicly available. Taiwanese climbers were also conservative about accident details, out of fear of embarrassing the climber or causing further grief to their families. In the age of rapid information sharing and the internet, rumors of accidents frequently made rounds on online climbing forums as people speculated and analyzed the limited information they had. It often devolved into a muddle of misinformation.

According to the TOCC’s records, there have been two fatalities, three severe injuries, and several minor injuries between 2009 and 2020. Chen knew that many climbing accidents are preventable, but only if people can learn from past mistakes. Having read each year’s accident reports cover to cover, Chen began taking stock of how accidents happen and tried to implement prevention measures in his home climbing area of Long Dong. The unique safety problem at Long Dong lies in the interaction between sea salt, containing chloride ions, and steel. Combined with moisture, it significantly speeds up rusting, and several serious accidents have happened as a result of bolt failure. The social trails along the cliffs also present a safety hazard, as gym climbers transitioning to outdoor climbing are less apt at navigating exposed and complicated terrain.

In the decades since Robertson began climbing at Long Dong, two significant rebolting efforts have removed most expansion bolts and glue-ins that are a decade or older, and replaced them. Taiwanese climbers learned from climbers in southern Thailand, another place with abundant seaside climbing, that titanium is the only long term solution for safe seaside bolts. The most recent rebolting effort in 2011, spearheaded by both individual climbers and community donations, replaced dangerous bolts with titanium glue-ins or SS 306s, installed bolted anchors on popular trad routes to prevent walk-off accidents, and pull-tested any remaining old bolts to ensure their integrity. Yet rebolting was only part of the safety equation. In the 2024 ANAC, they pored over an alarming report on a carabiner cutting a climber’s rope and shared their thoughts with their community.

The trio worried over misinformation being passed around online, and the lack of an authoritative voice to manage accident reports. Chen wanted the Taiwanese climbing community to have readily available information on accident reports so they could learn from them, analyze them, and use the information to research climbing areas and prepare for hazards. The TOCC has an accidents database for climbers to self-report. They collected 19 reports between 2009 and 2020. But self-reporting has its limitations. Both Chen and Wang express concern over the cultural reluctance to talk about climbing accidents, particularly those involving a fatality or serious injury. The topic is avoided not only out of respect but also due to superstitions that discussing death may invite bad luck or misfortune. Close-calls often go unreported, sometimes because climbers think it may be too trivial, other times because climbers are embarrassed by human error.

To cross that hurdle, Chen theorized, he wanted an example of accident reports that are meticulously documented and freely available. So he turned to the Club.

ANAC had seen translations in the past, notably to Spanish in 2021 and to Simplified Chinese in 2022 by notable Chinese climber and translator Zhou Peng. Chen knew it would be a daunting task.

Two months and several hundred hours of labor later, Chen finished a Traditional Chinese translation of ANAC. The TOCC posted the document on their website, free to download.

Chen says he will continue to translate ANAC next year, and wishes to continue in the years after. Chen, like many AAC volunteers who give their time, skills, and energy to causes they believe in, is often working in challenging environments or with limited resources. Downplaying the sacrifice of his own time, Chen instead emphasizes the rewarding aspects and intrinsic joy of giving in volunteer work. This translation will serve the Taiwanese climbing community for years to come, and may serve as a catalyst to climbers embracing the idea that hard topics like accidents warrant discussion and analysis.

Before there can be a Taiwan climbing accident report, Chen knew he needed to share existing data of how meticulously documented accident reports can add to the collective knowledge of a community.

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Photo by Shao Ping Weng.

The mountains and hillsides of Taiwan are green year-round. At Long Dong, you turn north and you see the sea, you turn south and you see sweeping swaths of green hillside. The subtropical mountainsides of Taiwan are always lush with camphor laurels, peeling elms, banyans, sugar palms, and charcoal trees, a mess of jungle, undulating waves from the foothills all the way to the top. Not a speck of anything else but green and blue.

The trio of friends say Taiwan calls you home. Wang specifically remembers climbing in Yosemite, marveling over the big walls and seas of granite, but in the back of his mind, he still thought about the seacliffs of Long Dong, and the mountains of Taiwan. They stand together on the cliffs overlooking Long Dong Bay, racked up and ready to climb, marveling over how they’ll never get sick of the view.

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Your Guide to Climbing at The New River Gorge

The World Class Climbing You Need to Check Out in 2025

By Sierra McGivney

Originally published in Guidebook XIII

If you haven’t logged some ascents on West Virginia stone, that’s a gap in your climbing resume that you should rectify immediately. You won’t regret making the trek to climb on the New’s tiered roofs and bouldery, sequency walls. The New River Gorge (NRG) is one of the few truly world-class destinations in the U.S., and a trip to visit in 2025 would be an easy way to ensure your climbing year is filled with unbelievable climbing— the kind that has you yelling, “WOW I LOVE ROCK CLIMBING” halfway up the wall.

STYLES OF THE NRG:

technical, bouldery, puzzle solving, high steps, big pulls, powerful movement

The NRG boasts miles of challenging climbing on ironclad Nuttall sandstone cliffs. Many routes overlook the stunning New River Gorge, or you can travel deep into the vibrant West Virginia forest and find hidden cliffs with stellar routes. The rock is composed of 98% quartz—some even claim it’s harder than Yosemite granite. With over 3,000 established routes, the NRG has almost every type of climbing: run-out and well-bolted, slab, overhangs, cracks, techy vertical faces, corners, arêtes, trad and sport climbing, and bouldering. Technical small holds, long reaches, big moves, and old-school bolting leave many shaking in their climbing shoes. You’ll never get bored if you love finding a sequence of moves that unlocks a climb. And you’ll never feel better than when you push through the mental challenge and pull off the move.

“It’s a humbling place to climb, so you have to be willing to be humbled a lot,” said Jane Kilgour, the Community & Guest Services Manager at the AAC New River Gorge Campground.

Liz Haas on Black Rider (a.k.a. Pocket Route) (5.13a). Land of the Shawnee, Yuchi, and Moneton peoples. Photo by AAC member Jan Novak.

The caliber of climbs makes every fall and try-hard scream worthwhile.

“[The New River Gorge] is the kind of place where people come for a week, and they end up staying for three months and then moving around their plans for the year so they can return again next season,” said Kilgour.

The best advice for visiting the New: chase stars, not grades. The quality of lines and routes is why climbers can’t get enough of the NRG.

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Each membership is critical to the AAC’s work: advocating for climbing access and natural landscapes, offering essential knowledge to the climbing community through our accident analysis and documentation of cutting edge climbing, and supporting our members with our rescue benefit, discounts, grants and more. 

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A Brief History of New River Gorge Climbing

Magdalena Gromadzka on Tattoo (5.12a). Photo by AAC member Jan Novak.

The New River Gorge National Park is on the land of the Cherokee and Shawnee, among other tribes. We acknowledge their past, present, and future connection to the land. To learn more, visit the Sandstone Visitor Center on your trip.

In the 1970s, West Virginia locals began developing the New River Gorge, focusing on what would become the Bridge Area before the NRG Bridge was completed in 1977. Classics like Chockstone (5.9), Jaws (5.9), and Tree Route (5.10) were climbed in the Bridge Buttress area and graded initially as 5.7. Locals continued to put up more routes, moving on to the Junkyard Wall.

Whispers of amazing climbing at the New River Gorge spread, and the 1980s brought a new wave of climbers who pushed grades and technical difficulties in the area. Rapscallion’s Blues (5.10c), Leave It to Jesus (5.11c), and Incredarete (5.12c) were put up, and with every season, more climbing areas were discovered. In the late ‘80s, sport climbing and Lynn Hill came to the New. Eric Horst put up the first 5.13 in the New, Diamond Life, and Lynn clinched the first ascent of the Greatest Show on Earth (5.13a), setting a new standard for women in the New River Gorge.

Hard sport climbing ruled the early 1990s. The late Brian McCray put up difficult lines on overhanging walls, including the first 5.14a, Proper Soul. Development plateaued in the late ‘90s, as the NPS acquired most of the climbing cliffs, and a power drill ban was enacted in 1998. Currently, the NPS accepts permit applications for new routes. In the 2010s, many 5.14s were bolted and sent, including Trebuchet (5.14b), Coal Train (5.14a), and Mono Loco (5.14a) by guidebook author Mike Williams. Hoax of Clocks (5.14a) was the first route to be bolted legally under the current NPS climbing management plan after the New officially became a national park in December 2020. New routes like Jonathan Siegrist’s Full Metal Brisket (5.15a) continue to be put up alongside classics at popular crags to this day.

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New River Gorge Beta

Photo by AAC member Jan Novak.

Getting There

• Driving: The NRG is located in south-central West Virginia near Fayetteville.

• Flying: Fly into Charleston, West Virginia, and drive about 90 minutes to the NRG. A car is essential at the NRG, where crags, lodging, and grocery stores are spread out.

Season

The New can be climbed year-round and has great warm and cold-weather crags.

The best seasons are fall and spring.

• Fall: It is possible to climb at any crag during this season by chasing sun or shade.

• Spring: Longer days, higher humidity.

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Book Your Stay

If you’re climbing in the New River Gorge, stay in the heart of the national park at the AAC’s New River Gorge Campground, within walking distance of popular climbing crags and hiking trails.

Reservations are required, and same-day reservations must be made by 11 a.m. on the day of arrival. Reservations open March 1, 2025.

The campground offers three types of accommodations: private tent sites, vehicle camping parking spots/sites, and communal camping spots.

No RVs, trailers, or vehicles over 20 feet. Pets are welcome but must be leashed.
Prices are as follows: Member / Non-Member

• Private tent site: $24 / $32

• Communal camping: $10 / $14

• Vehicle sites: $16 / $20

AAC’s New River Gorge Campground season runs from the end of March to early December.

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Emmeline Wang on Legacy (5.11a). AAC member Jan Nova

Notes on Climbing Ethics

• Stick-clipping the first bolt is expected. On some climbs, the first bolt is 20 feet off the ground.

• Always lower (instead of rappelling) from the anchors on single-pitch climbs when possible. New River Alliance of Climbers (NRAC) is active in the area and replaces bad anchors.

• Fixed or project draws within the national park are illegal, and placing fixed protection is by permit only.

• Most NRG crags are within the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, so all NPS rules apply when climbing there—especially the seven principles of Leave No Trace.

• Grocery Stores

  • Swiftwater General Store, Lansing

  • Walmart Supercenter, Fayetteville

  • Kroger, Fayetteville

• Rest Day Fun

  • Hike Endless Wall Trail, a 3.2-mile loop in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

  • Check out over 60 miles of mountain biking trails in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

  • Raft the New River or the Gauley River.

  • Kayak, stand-up paddleboard, or swim at Summersville Lake.

  • On a rainy day, head over to Rangefinder Coffee in Fayetteville.

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Photo by AAC member Jan Novack.

Climbs You Need to Check Out

Now that you’ve packed, prepared, and researched, the looming question of what to climb still stands. We’ve highlighted a number of climbs you don’t want to miss with help from our New River Gorge Campground staff.

Warning: There are plenty more classics not listed here. You might leave wanting to come back for more.

A Forgotten Classic

• Bicycle Club 5.11d: Not necessarily “for- gotten,” but often overlooked compared to its neighbor, Sancho Belige (5.11c), this is a high-quality route.

Six Must-Climb Routes up to 5.9+

• Ferrovieri 5.7 Sport

• Hippie Dreams 5.7 Sport

• Mrs. Field’s Follies 5.8 Sport

• Two Bag Face 5.9 Trad

• Four Sheets to the Wind 5.9+ Trad

• Flight of the Gumby 5.9+ Sport

Ten Must-Climb Trad Climbs

• Harder Than 5.9

• Black and Tan 5.10a

• Hyperactive 5.10a

• Burning Calves 5.10b

• Rapscallion’s Blues 5.10c

• Fairtracer 5.10d

• Stuck in Another Dimension 5.11a

• Mellifluus 5.11a

• Leave It to Jesus 5.11c

• The Beckoning 5.12a

Ten Must-Climb Sport Climbs Harder Than 5.9

• The Rico Suave Arête 5.10a

• The Decameron 5.10b

• Legacy 5.11a

• Satisfaction Guaranteed 5.11a/b

• Porter for Recorder 5.11d

• Psycho Wrangler 5.12a

• Concertina 5.12a

• Thunderstruck 5.12b

• Welcome to Conditioning 5.12d (“Indisputable Proof that God is a Climber.” —Mike Williams)

• Blood Raid 5.13a

Ten Classic Boulder Problems

• Gymnastic Fantastic V2

• Perfect World V2

• Way of the Gun V4

• Gundercling V4

• Loki V5

• Sunshine Arête V5

• The MacGuffin V5

• West Virginia Hot Pocket V6

• There’s No I in Illiterate V6/7

• 1,2 Punch V7

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Life: An Objective Hazard

Zach Clanton’s Climbing Grief Fund Story

by Hannah Provost

Photos by AAC member Zach Clanton

Originally published in Guidebook XIII

I.

Zach Clanton was the photographer, so he was the last one to drop into the couloir. Sitting on the cornice as he strapped his board on, his camera tucked away now, his partners far below him and safe out of the avalanche track, he took a moment and looked at the skyline. He soaked in the jagged peaks, the snow and rock, the blue of the sky. And he said hello to his dead friends.

In the thin mountain air, as he was about to revel in the breathlessness of fast turns and the thrill of skating on a knife’s edge of danger, they were close by—the ones he’d lost to avalanches. Dave and Alecs. Liz and Brook. The people he had turned to for girlfriend advice, for sharing climbing and splitboarding joy. The people who had witnessed his successes and failures. Too many to name. Lost to the great allure, yet ever-present danger, of the big mountains.

Zach had always been the more conservative one in his friend group and among his big mountain splitboard partners. Still, year after year, he played the tricky game of pushing his snowboarding to epic places.

Zach is part of a disappearing breed of true dirtbags. Since 2012, he has lived inside for a total of ten months, otherwise based out of his Honda Element and later a truck camper, migrating from Alaska to Mexico as the seasons dictated. When he turned 30, something snapped. Maybe he lost his patience with the weather-waiting in Alaska. Maybe he just got burnt out on snowboarding after spending his entire life dedicated to the craft. Maybe he was fried from the danger of navigating avalanche terrain so often. Regardless, he decided to take a step back from splitboarding and fully dedicate his time to climbing, something that felt more controllable, less volatile. With rock climbing, he believed he would be able to get overhead snow and ice hazards out of his life. He was done playing that game.

Even as Zach disentangled his life and career from risky descents, avalanches still haunted him. Things hit a boiling point in 2021, when Zach lost four friends in one season, two of whom were like brothers. As can be the case with severe trauma, the stress of his grief showed up in his body—manifesting as alopecia barbae. He knew grief counseling could help, but it all felt too removed from his life. Who would understand his dirtbag lifestyle? Who would understand how he was compelled to live out of his car, and disappear into the wilderness whenever possible?

He grappled with his grief for years, unsure how to move forward. When, by chance, he listened to the Enormocast episode featuring Lincoln Stoller, a grief therapist who’s part of the AAC’s Climbing Grief Fund network and an adventurer in his own right—someone who had climbed with Fred Beckey and Galen Rowell, some of Zach’s climbing idols—a door seemed to crack open, a door leading toward resiliency, and letting go. He applied to the Climbing Grief Grant, and in 2024 he was able to start seeing Lincoln for grief counseling. He would start to see all of his close calls, memories, and losses in a new light.

Photo by AAC member Zach Clanton

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II.

With his big mountain snowboarding days behind him, Zach turned to developing new routes for creativity and the indescribable pleasure of moving across rock that no one had climbed before. With a blank canvas, he felt like he was significantly mitigating and controlling any danger. There was limited objective hazard on the 1,500-foot limestone wall of La Gloria, a gorgeous pillar west of El Salto, Mexico, where he had created a multi-pitch classic called Rezando with his friend Dave in early 2020. Dave and Zach had become brothers in the process of creating Rezando, having both been snowboarders who were taking the winter off to rock climb. On La Gloria, it felt like the biggest trouble you could get into was fighting off the coatimundi, the dexterous ringtail racoon-like creatures that would steal their gear and snacks.

After free climbing all but two pitches of Rezando in February of 2020, when high winds and frigid temperatures drove them off the mountain, Zach was obsessed with the idea of going back and doing the first free ascent. He had more to give, and he wasn’t going to loosen his vise grip on that mountain. Besides, there was much more potential for future lines.

Dave Henkel on the bivy ledge atop pitch eight during the first ascent of Rezando. PC: Zach Clanton

But Dave decided to stay in Whistler that next winter, and died in an avalanche as Zach was in the process of bolting what would become the route Guerreras. After hearing the news, Zach alternated between being paralyzed by grief and manically bolting the route alone.

In a world where his friends seemed to be dropping like flies around him, at least he could control this.

Until the fire.

It was the end of the season, and his friend Tony had come to La Gloria to give seven-hour belays while Zach finished bolting the pitches of Guerreras ground-up. Just as they touched down after three bivvies and a successful summit, Tony spotted a wildfire roaring in their direction. Zach, his mind untrained on how fast forest fires can move, was inclined to shrug it off as less of an emergency than it really was. Wildfire wasn’t on the list of dangers he’d considered. But the fire was moving fast, ripping toward them, and it was the look on Tony’s face that convinced Zach to run for it.

In retrospect, Zach would likely not have made it off that mountain if it weren’t for Tony. He estimates they had 20 minutes to spare, and would have died of smoke inhalation if they had stayed any longer. When they returned the next winter, thousands of dollars of abandoned gear had disintegrated. The fire had singed Zach’s hopes of redemption—of honoring Dave with this route and busying his mind with a first ascent—to ash. It would only be years later, and through a lot of internal work, that Zach would learn that his vise grip on La Gloria was holding him back. He would open up the first ascent opportunity to others, and start to think of it as a gift only he could give, rather than a loss.

But in the moment, in 2021, this disaster was a crushing defeat among many. With the wildfire, the randomness of death and life started to settle in for Zach. There was only so much he could control. Life itself felt like an objective hazard.

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III.

In January 2022, amid getting the burnt trash off the mountain and continuing his free attempts on Guerreras, Zach took a job as part of the film crew for the National Geographic show First Alaskans—a distraction from the depths of his grief. Already obsessed with all things Alaskan, he found that there was something unique and special about documenting Indigenous people in Alaska as they passed on traditional knowledge to the next generation. But on a shoot in Allakaket, a village in the southern Brooks Range, his plan for distraction disintegrated.

In the Athabascan tradition, trapping your first wolverine as a teenager is a rite of passage. Zach and the camera crew followed an Indigenous man and his two sons who had trapped a wolverine and were preparing to kill and process the animal. In all of his time spent splitboarding and climbing in these massive glaciated mountains that he loved so much, Zach had seen his fair share of wolverines— often the only wildlife to be found in these barren, icy landscapes. As he peered through the camera lens, he was reminded of the time he had wound through the Ruth Gorge, following wolverine tracks to avoid crevasses, or that time on a mountain pass, suddenly being charged by a wolverine galloping toward him. His own special relationship with these awkward, big-pawed creatures flooded into his mind. What am I doing here, documenting this? Was it even right to allow such beautiful, free creatures to be hunted in this way? he wondered.

The wolverine was stuck in a trap, clinging to a little tree. Every branch that the wolverine could reach she had gnawed away, and there were bite marks on the limbs of the wolverine where she’d attempted to chew her own arm off. Now, that chaos and desperation were in the past. The wolverine was just sitting, calm as can be, looking into the eyes of the humans around her. It felt like the wolverine was peering into Zach’s soul. He could sense that the wolverine knew she would die soon, that she had come to accept it. It was something about the hollowness of her stare.

He couldn’t help but think that the wolverine was just like all his friends who had died in the mountains, that there had to have been a moment when they realized they were going to be dead—a moment of pure loneliness in which they stared death in the face. It was the loneliest and most devastating way to go, and as the wolverine clung to the tree with its battered, huge, human-like paws, he saw the faces of his friends.

When would be the unmarked day on the calendar for me? He was overwhelmed by the question. What came next was a turning point.

With reverence and ceremony, the father led his sons through skinning the wolverine, and then the process of giving the wolverine back to the wild. They built a pyre, cutting the joints of the animal, and burning it, letting the smoke take the animal’s spirit back to where it came from, where the wolverine would tell the other animals that she had been treated right in her death. This would lead to a moose showing itself next week, the father told his sons, and other future food and resources for the tribe.

As Zach watched the smoke meander into the sky through the camera lens, the cycle of loss and life started to feel like it made a little more sense.

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IV.

After a few sessions with Lincoln Stoller in the summer of 2024, funded by the Climbing Grief Fund Grant, Zach Clanton wasn’t just invested in processing and healing his grief—he was invested in the idea of building his own resiliency, of letting go in order to move forward.

On his next big expedition, he found that he had an extra tool in his toolbox that made all the difference.

They had found their objective by combing through information about old Fred Beckey ascents. A bush plane reconnaissance mission into the least mapped areas of southeast Alaska confirmed that this peak, near what they would call Rodeo Glacier, had epic potential. Over the years, with changing temperatures and conditions, what was once gnarly icefalls had turned into a clean granite face taller than El Cap, with a pyramid peak the size of La Gloria on top. A couple of years back, they had received an AAC Cutting Edge Grant to pursue this objective, but a last-minute injury had foiled their plans. This unnamed peak continued to lurk in the back of Zach’s mind, and he was finally ready to put some work in.

As Zach and James started off up this ocean of granite, everything was moving 100 miles per hour. Sleep deprived and totally strung out, they dashed through pitch after pitch, but soon, higher on the mountain, Zach started feeling a crushing weight in his chest, a welling of rage that was taking over his body and making it impossible to climb. He was following James to the next belay, and scaring the shit out of himself, unable to calm his body enough to pull over a lip. This was well within his abilities. What was happening? How come he couldn’t trust his body when he needed it most?

At the belay, Zach broke down. He was suddenly feeling terrified and helpless in this ocean of granite, with the unknown hovering above him. They had stood on the shore, determined to go as far into the unknown sea of rock as they could, while still coming back. When would be the breaking point? Could they trust themselves not to go too far?

Hesitantly at first, Zach spoke his thoughts, but he quickly found that James, who had similar experiences of losing friends in the mountains, understood what he was going through. As they talked through their exhaustion and fear and uncertainty, they recognized in each other the humbling experience of being uprooted by grief, and also the ability to process and keep going. They made the decision to keep climbing until sunset, swapping leads as needed. Zach was inspired, knowing how shattered he had felt, and yet still able to reach deep within to push through. With the resiliency tools he had worked on with Lincoln, this experience didn’t feel so debilitating.

Yet resilience also requires knowing when to say no, when something is too much. After a long, uncomfortable bivy halfway up a 5,000-foot rock climb, the two decided to start the long day of rappels, wary of a closing weather window.

Zach Clanton and his dog, Gustaf Peyote Clanton, at Widebird. “He [Gustaf] is a distinguished gentleman.” Photo by Holly Buehler

Back safely on the glacier, the two climbing partners realized it was their friend Reese’s death day. Taking a whiskey shot, and pouring one out for Reese, they parted ways—James to his tent for a nap, and Zach to roam the glacier.

The experience of oneness he found, roaming that desolate landscape, he compares to a powerful psychedelic experience. It was a snowball of grief, trauma, resilience, meditation, the connection he felt with the friends still here and those gone. It was like standing atop the mountain before he dropped into the spine, and the veil between this world and those who were gone was a little less opaque. He felt a little piece of himself—one that wanted a sense of certainty—loosen a little. The only way he was going to move forward was to let go.

He wasn’t fixed. Death wouldn’t disappear. Those friends were gone, and the rift they left behind would still be there. But he was ready to charge into the mountains again, and find the best they had to offer.

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The Height of Mountains

Findings from the AAC Research Grant

by Hannah Provost

Artwork By Jill Pelto

Originally published in Guidebook XIII

Eric Gilbertson was on the summit of Rainier. Or was he? With the differential GPS set up in front of him, he hopped from foot to foot—it was cold up there, but he was also anxious to confirm his suspicions by applying a more rigorous measuring process to the changes he could see with the naked eye. Funded by the AAC Research Grant, he had used an Abney level to measure the relative heights of Columbia Crest, the traditional icecap summit of Rainier where he stood now, as compared to the actual highest point in the summit area—the southwest edge of the crater rim, which was a rock outcrop.

Based on the Abney level, Columbia Crest was distinctly shorter than the southwest rim. With calculations spinning in his head, he noticed the unmistakably dirtier, more trampled quality of Columbia Crest, the way dirt and rocks seemed to muddle the pure snow dome, bringing a wilted quality to the landscape, especially compared to what he could remember seeing in old photographs of Rainier’s summit. He would have to wait to process the data from the differential GPS to be sure exactly by how much the summit had changed. Yet more than the relief of seeing his hypothesis likely confirmed, a bigger question loomed: Were mountains, which so many consider the stalwart indicator of the unmoving, the unchanging, the steady, actually shrinking? And what would it mean if they were?

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Eric Gilbertson is a man of many lists and projects. Each of his projects coalesces around peakbagging, and now surveying. The idea to research the current heights of the five remaining icecap peaks in the Lower 48, which includes Rainier, started when Mt. St. Helens eroded off the top 100 highest peaks of Washington list. Gilbertson had discovered that St. Helens had been steadily eroding by four inches each year since 1989, and because of that, St. Helens had technically fallen off the top 100 list around 2021. As an exacting, rigorous person who prizes accuracy above all in his life’s work, Gilbertson was intrigued—were there more discrepancy in the heights of the other top 100 Washington mountains? If his goal was to do all the hundred highest, and be the first to do them all in winter no less, he wanted to do it right.

Before fact-checking the hundred highest list, before measuring the status of the five historical icecap peaks of the Lower 48, Eric and his brother Matthew had been pursuing what they called “The Country High Points Project.” Though the brothers are each respected alpinists in their own right, with several technical first ascents and inclusions in the American Alpine Journal to Eric’s name, they are peakbaggers at heart. Which is why they conceived of the project to get to the highest point of every country in the world, as defined by UN members and observer states, plus Antarctica. Thus, there are 196 highpoints on their list. So far, Eric has gotten to the highest point of 144 countries and Matthew has ticked 97.

Eric says he sees the project as a framework for creating opportunities for really interesting adventures. “[It] kind of requires every kind of skill set you can imagine. It definitely requires high-altitude mountaineering, like K2 is on there and Everest, but it also requires jungle bushwhacking in the Caribbean or hiking through the desert in Chad. There is so much red tape you have to get through—like in West Africa there are so many police checkpoints so you have to navigate those—so many languages you have to speak, logistics to make it interesting, and the other interesting aspect is [sometimes we don’t know which] is the highest mountain, so in comes the survey equipment.”

Decrease in Glacier Mass Balance, by artist Jill Pelto, the daughter of glaciologist Dr. Mauri Pelto. Jill Pelto integrates scientific data into her artwork to capture the impacts of climate change on our wild landscapes.

When, in 2018, the brothers determined the highest point in Saudi Arabia had actually been misunderstood all along, Eric became particularly interested in exactness and discovery, and how these elements added an interesting complexity to getting to the great heights of the world. A lot more was unknown than one might first imagine, given our information-overload culture. Not knowing if the mountain you were climbing was even the highest point in the country added a challenge that seemed to surpass even first ascenting.

Yet Eric is not always flitting across to the farthest reaches of the world. As an associate teaching professor at Seattle University, he is rooted a good portion of the year, so he is constantly finding ways to feed his passion for discovery and peakbagging right in his backyard. First with adjusting the accuracy of the hundred highest list, and then with his research on icecap peaks, Eric had discovered that even in one of the most mapped countries in the world, a lot more was unknown, and even the known was changing.

There have been five icecap peaks in the Lower 48 in the last century, according to the collective mountaineering knowledge that Eric Gilbertson consulted: Mt. Rainier, Eldorado Peak, East Fury, Liberty Cap, and Colfax Peak—all in Washington state. According to Eric’s research, Mt. Baker has had a rock summit since the 1930s, and therefore was no longer on the list for consideration. For Eric’s purposes, an icecap peak has permanent ice or snow on its summit throughout the year, never melting down to rock. Until now, glaciologists and others studying the cryosphere, or Earth’s ice in all its forms, have not agreed upon a specific term for mountains with snow or ice at their summits, though the term “icecap summit” or “icecap peak” has been used colloquially throughout the world. Eric’s findings—that these summits are dramatically changing— have brought a new importance to being able to name and articulate what exactly is happening on the world’s icy summits.

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Though the scientific importance of icecap peaks has been largely understudied until now, the cultural importance of mountains covered in ice has been profound for climbers and mountaineers. In the past, combatting snow and ice when climbing was a prized indicator of skill and proficiency, a symbol of a “true” alpinist or climber. In fact, when the AAC still required applications for membership, a memo from the 1926 bylaws indicated that the requirement for membership hinged upon “not the mere attainment of height by walking, but rather the ascent of peaks or the traverse of passes and glaciers well above the snowline of the district and presenting technical difficulties.” Mark Carey, a multidisciplinary researcher who studies the societal dimensions of climate change, has illuminated the current fascination with and fixation on glaciers in our current discussions about climate. He argues that glaciers have become prominent as climate imagery not because of the “specific consequences of melting glaciers or the scientific data emerging from ice cores,” but rather because glaciers have many cultural associations that they have gained over the centuries, which have multiplied their significance. Glaciers have been variously seen as terrifying and vast, gorgeous and mysterious, as hubs for science, as important challenges of mountaineering, as something to conquer, and as a symbol of wilderness. Though not glaciers properly, these same cultural touch points seem to apply to icecap summits. More was at stake in Eric’s research than just changing a few numbers on a map.

The AAC Research Grant set Eric up to do a rigorous exploration into this question. Eric used both a differential GPS and an Abney level, and also cross-referenced all historical data he could find about the elevations of these peaks. In surveys done in 1956 using a theodolite and an Abney level, and in 1988 and 1998 using a differential GPS, Rainier’s height was found to be basically the same. Eric’s 2024 measurements were conducted in a way that created methodological consistency with these previous surveys. Eric found that four of the five historical icecap peaks have melted by 20–30 feet in the last 20–70 years, and that three of the five are in fact no longer icecap peaks, because they no longer have permanent ice on their summits. As Eric reported: “Mt Rainier melted 21.8ft, Eldorado Peak melted 20ft, and East Fury melted 30ft. All three now have rock summits. Liberty Cap melted 26.3ft but is still an icecap peak. Colfax is maintaining a steady elevation and is still an icecap peak.” After the relief of being right came the sense of loss.

Rainier had shrunk. This iconic mountain is melting. It seems a devastating revelation, and not just to climbers. It might even be a more tangible and understandable visual than the far more obscure and far-away-feeling imagery of glaciers retreating in the Arctic and polar bears stranded on collapsing sea ice. And then, of course, there is also the totality of realizing that four of the five historical icecap peaks have all shrunk, and by similar amounts. Now, Eric feels driven to dig into the much more complicated question of why.

40 Years in the north Cascades. The top surface of the mountain glacier is a line graph that depicts the decreasing mass balance of North Cascade glaciers in Washington state from 1984-2022. By Jill Pelto

According to Dr. Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist of four decades and the Director of the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project, Eric’s findings are consistent with the melting found across monitored glaciers in the region: “Global warming has caused the widespread thinning of mountain glaciers, including at their highest elevations, not just here [in the Cascades], but across all mountain ranges. Cascade summits are locations where the wind limits the deposition of snow, making the few remaining icy locations vulnerable to increased summer melting. In the North Cascades we have observed an annual ~1% volume loss over 41 years. This melt has caused glacier retreat, but also has been exposing new rock areas all the way to the top of the glaciers.”

The fact that these very visible parts of the cryosphere are dramatically changing is also not surprising when contextualized by the grand scope of climate research. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, “the cryosphere is an especially sensitive indicator of climate change. ... Between 1979 and 2016, Earth lost 87,000 square kilometers (33,000 square miles) of sea ice, an area about the size of Lake Superior, per year on average. The extent of the cryosphere matters because its bright white surface reflects sunlight, cooling the planet. Changes in the area and location of snow and ice can alter air temperatures, change sea levels, and even affect ocean currents worldwide.” Even though the sheer volume of ice lost on Rainier and the other three previously icecap summits seems inconsequential in comparison to this average worldwide sea ice loss, it means that the impacts that glaciologists have been seeing across the world are a little closer to home than we might like to believe. In the grand scheme of climate science, the summits of these peaks might only be unique to a climber’s mind.

For many experts in this field, Eric’s findings ring true on an intuitive level. But to drill down even more specifically on the mechanism behind Eric’s findings, Eric has teamed up with Dr. Scott Hotaling, a specialist on high mountain ecosystems and how these ecosystems are being affected by climate change, and together they are working on an academic paper that will pair temperature data with Eric’s elevation surveys. Perhaps this paper will explain the tantalizing question of why Colfax Peak is an outlier.

Of course, as devastating and evocative an image as it might be, there are also political and legal implications to changing those tiny numbers etched next to the summits on your map. National parks, including Rainier, are beholden to USGS topographical surveys for the elevations they report. Eric’s findings are essentially moot in the eyes of the NPS until the USGS replicates them. But as Mike Tischler, the Director of the USGS National Geospatial Program, has reported, the USGS does not currently collect or maintain point elevations of summits.

Tischler reports: “Historically, point elevations of prominent peaks were printed on topographic maps, with the source of the elevation being manual survey. The most recent USGS example of this is a 1996 update of a topographic map originally produced in 1971, based on a field verification in 1971.” Though the USGS is actively conducting surveys using lidar technology to offer 3D elevation data for the U.S. topography, a specific spot elevation value is not official, nor does it represent a precisely measured value for something like a summit. As the USGS warns on their website, the data found by this method might not be the most accurate for alpine landscapes, as “differences between these elevations [manually surveyed elevations vs. lidar data] might exist for features such as mountain peaks or summits, and where the local relief is significant.”

And who would expect mountains to change heights anyway, even if most alpinists know that the mountains seem alive? For now, the USGS seems uninterested in verifying Eric’s findings. But even with this challenge making it difficult for Eric’s research to be widely implemented, Eric is unfazed. This hiccup is just another logistical challenge to navigate as he seeks, with absolute determination, exactness in his climbing goals. Certainly, whatever his next project, Eric Gilbertson will be shaking things up a bit and challenging what climbers, and everyone, knew about the height of mountains.

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Navajo Rising: An Indigenous Emergence Story

Shiprock (Tsé Bit a í, “winged rock”) rises over 1,500 feet above the desert floor of the Navajo Nation in San Juan County, New Mexico (Diné, Pueblos, Ute lands). Shiprock was a sought-after summit during the late 1930s, until the first ascent was done in 1939 by David Brower and Sierra Club team. It marks one of the first times bolts were placed for protection in the history of North American climbing. However, the rock formation is highly sacred to the Navajo people, having historical and religious significance. In 1966, the Navajo Nation banned all climbing on their lands, including Shiprock.

by Aaron Mike

This Indigenous People’s Day, we’re reposting a beautifully written essay by Navajo climber Aaron Mike that we published in 2019.

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Acknowledging the roots and conceptualizations of the outdoor activities that we so passionately pursue enriches our participation and ties us to the land, as well as to one another. When we view our industry through a historical lens, we inevitably hear about John Muir, Sir Edmund Hillary, Royal Robbins, and other giants of outdoor recreation. We revere them based on their successes and physical accomplishments. There is one similarity between them that is rarely mentioned: the entirety of their recreational pursuits took place on ancestral homelands of Indigenous Peoples. The Miwok and Piute resided amongst the majestic granite walls of what is now Yosemite National Park. The Havasupai and Hualapai cultivated the areas of the Grand Canyon. The Shoshone, Bannock, Blackfoot, Crow, Flathead, Gros Ventre, and the Nez Perce tribes inhabited what is now Grand Teton National Park. The history and heritage of Indigenous peoples as an inherent part of the lands on which we recreate is a topic that must be part of the conversation if we are to achieve a responsible, sustainable, and inclusive industry. Especially today, this topic is paramount not only because it enhances the care and stewardship of the lands we all love, but also because it is a statement against the systematic dehumanization of a people. 

Diné Bahane’, the Navajo creation story, tells of the journey through three worlds to the fourth world, where the Navajo people now reside. The story details chaos and drama as the Diné, or “Holy people,” moved through Black World, which contained no light; Blue World, which contained light; and Yellow World, which contained great rivers. Eventually, in the 4th world, White World, the Diné would assume human form after gaining greater intelligence and awareness. Through these worlds deities, vegetation, and animals accompanied the Diné, as well as our four sacred mountains;  Sis Naajini (Blanca Peak), Tsoodził (Mount Taylor), Dook’o’oosłid (the San Francisco Peaks) and Dibé Nitsaa (Mount Hesperus).     

Like the story of my people, my tribe, I have gone through many different worlds to walk the path that I am on today. My first world, Ni’hodiłhił, consisted of a surreal state of constantly spending time in the outdoors on the Navajo Nation from Sanders, AZ to Monument Valley, AZ, as well as my hometown of Gallup, NM. Weekends and summers were spent playing with my cousins through the tranquility provided, or turbulence imposed, by our Mother Nature. My grandparents taught me about sheep herding with blue heelers, building hogáns, and butchering sheep. I learned how to take care of horses and cattle, and how to live off of the land. During the spring and summer I spent nights sleeping under the stars and a Pendleton blanket in the back of my grandfather’s early 1990’s Ford F-150. During the fall and winter, I woke up sweating under a sheep woolskin blanket next to a wood burning stove that my grandfather had installed. 

I blinked my eyes and I was in the second world of my journey, Ni’hodootł’izh, far from the Navajo Nation in the Northwest, transported to an environment where all of those activities that had made me feel so real were not customary or necessary, and were even frowned upon. Due to my Diné heritage and my personality, being in the outdoors is a necessity. It is hardwired into my entire being. In this second world, the connection to the land that I had experienced and loved was diverted and diminished. I began to feel disconnected from my Diné roots and felt a growing spiritual void.

I awoke for my first day in a new desert environment and into my third world, Ni’haltsoh. By this time, high school, my identity was in constant flux. I struggled to find my place and individual path in a sea of foreign values and ambitions. I blew through various sports, political ideas, social scenes, and academic areas of study. Amidst the chaos of these years, I found a vehicle that would take me into my fourth world, rock climbing. Being on the walls and boulders in Yosemite National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, the eastern Sierra Nevada, Cochise Stronghold, Hueco Tanks State Park, and Mount Lemmon with people that shared similar values brought me back to a feeling of connection. Rock climbing became my missing identity puzzle piece; a reincarnation of my first world. 

Ni’halgai, the fourth world of my journey: I am Tábaahá, the Edgewater clan, born for Tł’ógí, the Zia clan. My maternal grandfather is Táchii’nii and paternal grandfather is Tódích’íi’nii. After 16 years of redpoints, boulders, summits, alpine ascents, and first ascents, I am an Indigenous rock climbing guide, guide company owner, professional rock climbing athlete, and advocate for the protection of sacred land resources. My fourth world came about after I resolved that I am committed to the path I am on and that I do not want my story to be unique. It is my goal to provide the same access that was gifted to me to Indigenous youth as a means of connection to their land and to their heritage. 

The author, Aaron Mike, bouldering in Northern Arizona (Hopi, Yavapai, Western Apache, Ancestral Puebloan lands). PC: James Q Martin

Simply acknowledging Indigenous heritage and history as a part of the land is not the only answer. It is a step in our First World, eventually leading to our Fourth World of evolution. Accountability is not only assumed with the people and organizations in the industry that are trying to make a sustainable difference, but should be carried out through the actions of each and every climber. Throughout the decades and in my personal experience there has been a culture in climbing that tries to nullify existing law on sacred lands, specifically on the Navajo Nation. Climbers drill fresh bolts and pay to poach sacred formations behind excuses like “good intentions” or “having a Native friend.” These illegal actions are a modern day conquer-and-destroy mentality that fails to respect Indigenous sovereignty and deteriorates the credibility of potential sustainable rock climbing efforts.

Indigenous Peoples are not extinct. Not everything needs to be climbed. Recreation must take a back seat to respecting Indigenous practices that have existed for millennia. Media channels promote first ascents, first free ascents, first descents, and sending of beautiful lines in remote places on rock, snow, or water, which can overlook Indigenous values. The actions that we take must respect Indigenous culture and it is up to us as the greater climbing community to decide the direction that we wish to pursue. Like climbers’ push for Leave No Trace implementation and education, it is up to all of us to push our Local Climbing Organizations to provide information on how to recreate with respect on or near sacred lands and to develop relationships with local Tribes. We must shift the ethos from a western “take” culture in order to not only respect the original stewards of the land, but to ensure that Nahasdzáán, the Earth, will be healthy for our future generations. 

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Aaron Mike is a Navajo rock climbing guide, a NativeOutdoors athlete, and a Native Lands Regional Coordinator for the Access Fund. Since the time of this being originally published, he has also joined the Protect Our Winters athlete team. Find him here.

Guidebook X

The AAC’s Guidebook is our annual storytelling publication, capturing the stories of the people and issues that are at the forefront of the climbing communities mind. AAC members receive a print copy annually.

In this issue, we feature the filmography of up-and-coming director Marie-Louise Nkashama, explore the prolific history of route developer Jeff Jackson, investigate how groups on the ground are making climbing more inclusive, and highlight the story of an AAC volunteer who has given so much back to the community through YOSAR and storytelling.

Our feature articles do a deep dive into the AAC’s work to protect Pine Mountain, CA, from deforestation; retell the story of cutting-edge expeditions to Proboscis; highlight the intricacies of the conversation around oppressive and offensive route naming; and reminisce about the first successful climbing expedition to the Antarctic.

From cutting-edge climbing stories, to public lands, inclusive climbing community, and just plain cool climbers, you can find the breadth of the climbing community in these pages.

Rewind the Climb: Pete Schoening’s Miracle Belay on K2

by Grey Satterfield

artwork by James Adams

photos from the Dee Molenaar Collection

It happens every day, in every climbing gym across the country: the belay check. It can swell up a wave of anxiety for new climbers or a wave of frustration for more experienced ones, but no matter where you are in your climbing journey, you’ve done it. Everyone has demonstrated their ability to stop a falling climber. But what about stopping two climbers? What about stopping five? And what about stopping five without the convenience of a Gri-Gri, in a raging storm at 8,000 meters, hanging off the side of the second highest mountain in the world?

Pete Schoening checks all those boxes, and his miracle belay during an early attempt of K2 is one of the most famous in all of climbing history. It’s an awesome reminder that in climbing, much like in life, a lot of things change, but a lot of things don’t.

In 1953, during the third American expedition to K2, eight climbers funded by the American Alpine Club built their high camp at nearly 7,700m. The team consisted of Pete Schoening, Charles Houston, Robert Bates, George Bell, Robert Craig, Art Gilkey, Dee Molenaar, and Tony Streather.

On the seventh day of the ascent, climbing without oxygen, Schoening and his partners were within reach of the summit. With the first ascent of the long-sought peak tantalizingly close, the weather turned, trapping the climbers for10 days at nearly 8,000m. The storm raged on, destroying tents and dwindling supplies. Then Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis—a life-threatening condition of blood clots brought on by high altitude. If these clots made it into his lungs, he’d die. The team had no choice but to descend. Without hesitation, they abandoned the summit attempt and put themselves to work getting Gilkey to safety. With an 80mph blizzard compounding their effort, the climbing team bundled their injured comrade in a sleeping bag and a tent and, belayed by Schoening, began to lower him down the perilous walls of rock and ice.

After an exhausting day of descending, they had made it only 300m but were in sight of Camp VII, which was perched on a ledge another 180m further across the icy slope. Craig was the first to reach the site and began building camp. Then the real disaster struck.

As Bell was working his way across the steep face, he slipped and began to rocket down the side of the mountain. Bell was tied to Streather, who was also pulled off his feet and down the slope. The rope between the two climbers then became entangled with those connecting the team of Bates, Houston, and Molenaar, pulling them off in turn. The five climbers, along with the tethered Gilkey, began careening down the near vertical face, rag-dolling down the mountain over 100m and speeding towards the edge: a 2,000m fall to the glacier below.

At the last second—as the weight of six climbers slammed into him— Schoening thrust his ice axe into the snow behind a boulder and, with a hip belay, brought the climbers to a stop. The nylon rope (a relatively new piece of climbing gear at the time) went taught and shrank to half its diameter, but it did not snap. The hickory axe held the strain. Schoening, rope wrapped tightly around his shoulders, had performed what is considered one of the greatest saves in mountaineering history—known now and forever known as “The Belay.”

“When you get into something like mountain climbing,” Schoening said afterwards, “I’m sure you do things automatically. It’s a mechanical func- tion. You do it when necessary without giving it a thought of how or why.”

However, the incident was not without tragedy. As the team recovered from the fall and established a forced bivy, they discovered that Gilkey, bundled in sleeping bag and tent, had vanished. There is speculation that he cut himself free in order to save the lives of his friends above.

Schoening, always humble about the feat, was later awarded the David A. Sowles Memorial Award for his heroics by the American Alpine Club in 1981 as a “mountaineer who has distinguished himself, with unselfish devotion at personal risk or sacrifice of a major objective, in going to the assistance of fellow climbers imperiled in the mountains.”

Fifty-three years later, in 2006, 28 descendants of the surviving team gathered, calling themselves “The Children of ‘The Belay.’” All owed their lives to Schoening—and his ice axe—high on K2. The axe, which some have called the holy grail of mountaineering artifacts, is on permanent display at the American Mountaineering Museum in Golden, Colorado.

Much has changed in the world of climbing over the past 70 years. When Schoening headed up K2 in 1953, assisted-braking belay devices were yet to be invented. The AAC provided no rescue services as a benefit of membership. Nobody owned an InReach or a satellite phone. To survive in the mountains in that era was to rely solely on your team—on the trust that comes with tying in together and the knowledge that a friend is watching your back.

So we would do well to remember Pete Schoening and his belay—to hold the other end of the rope is a serious affair. The next time you go out climbing, don’t forget to give your belayer a high-five and a hug.

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Grey Satterfield is the digital marketing manager for the AAC. He has a decade of experience managing climbing gyms and loves to share his passion for climbing with anyone who will listen, be it through writing, photography, or swapping stories around the campfire.

In Search of Yosemite's Heart: One Writer's Journey Into the Valley of Giants

by Lauren DeLaunay Miller

photos by the Ellie Hawkins and Molly Higgins collections

Ellie Hawkins during an early ascent of the North America Wall, 1973, Yosemite National Park, CA. Land of the Central Sierra Miwok people. Keith Nannery.

To steal from author John Green, I fell in love with rock climbing the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. I was an indoorsy undergraduate at the University of North Carolina when I fell face-first into the world of climbing, thanks in large part to a picture in a magazine. My love for climbing has always been attached to an obsession with Yosemite, that ultimate proving ground of American rock climbers, but before I could make my way out there myself, I tried as hard as I could to connect with that world while still confined to the walls of libraries in Chapel Hill. Climbing literature was my portal, but it didn’t take long to exhaust my options. I don’t know if I could have articulated to you then why—or even that I was—searching for books written by women, but what I did know was that I was going to learn as much as I could about my heroes and try as best as I could to follow in their footsteps.

Five years after graduating, I moved into my new home in the back of Camp 4. The Yosemite Search & Rescue site has a mystical, magical air. To walk into the site is to, quite literally, walk in the footsteps of giants. I’ve climbed at a lot of American climbing destinations, from the New and Red River Gorges in the East, to Indian Creek, Joshua Tree, Red Rock Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Park, but nowhere have I found the lore as strong as in Yosemite.

At my now-local crag, we often refer to routes as “that 10b arete” or “the 5.11 crack to the left of the 12a.” But in Yosemite, routes have names. Astroman, the Central Pillar of Frenzy, Steck-Salathé, The Nose! We know their first ascensionists, and we know their stories. And these stories get passed down, sometimes in writing but often at campfires and dinner parties, fueled by whiskey or coffee or both. So while it didn’t take long for me to realize that there was a gap between the women’s stories I was hearing and those I was reading, it did take me a few years to muster up the courage to try to close that gap myself.

The idea for the book lived quietly in my head, but as it became louder and louder, I started to shyly share it with my climbing partners. “Don’t you think it would be cool,” I’d mutter, “if there were a whole book about women climbing in Yosemite?” The more I shared my vision, the more it grew. I started scanning old climbing magazines, making lists of the women I’d need to include. Friends started sending me articles they came across, screenshots of Supertopo forums and Mountain Project threads. I spent days at the new Yosemite Climbing Association museum in Mariposa going through thousands of pages of old magazines. At first, everything was centered on building “the list,” my dream list of contributors, and eventually I thought it might just be enough to submit as a book proposal.

Ellie Hawkins gets prepped for the void on the first ascent of Dyslexia (VI 5.10d A4), completed solo, 1985. Bruce Hawkins

I’ve always been the type of person who gets stuck on an idea and can’t shake it until I’ve seen it through. When I started climbing, I gave myself five years to climb El Cap, even though at the time I barely knew how to belay. Nearly every decision I made from that moment propelled me toward my goal, and I recognized the same level of obsession once I became hooked on the idea for this book. I made my proposal and sent it off to three publishing companies. I was living in a tent cabin in Camp 4 by then, and while my own world was consumed by Yosemite, I didn’t know if my idea would resonate outside of my community. But my first conversation with Emily White at Mountaineers Books soothed my concerns, and I knew my project would be safe under her supervision. I signed on the dotted line; I had just over a year to make this thing happen.

I started with the people I knew or could get personal introductions to. I met with Babsi Zangerl in her campervan in the Valley, and she was eager to be a part of the book. That was the moment I thought that I might actually be able to pull this off. Soon, Liz Robbins called, thanks to some coaxing by Ken Yager at the Yosemite Climbing Association. I drew on all the connections I’d made through my climbing career, and every response gave me a jolt of electricity. Fourteen months later, I turned in everything I had: 38 stories, totaling over 76,000 words.

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Molly Higgins and Barb Eastman atop El Cap after the first all-female ascent of The Nose, 1977. Larry Bruce

Molly Higgins leading to The Nose’s famous feature, the Great Roof. AAC member Barb Eastman

When Molly Higgins mentioned to Lauren that she had some old boxes of slides from her time in Yosemite, Lauren knew she had to see them. Prepared to see some faded, blurry images at best, she unearthed dozens of boxes—slide after slide of perfectly preserved photographs documenting some of the most courageous ascents of a generation, including images from the first all-female ascent of The Nose on El Cap in 1977. With the tremendous help of the AAC Library, Lauren organized Molly’s collection into an online exhibit which can be viewed at here.

Ellie Hawkins—the other photo contributer for this piece—might not be a household name in the world of Yosemite climbing, but she certainly should be. She’s the only woman to ever establish a Yosemite big wall first ascent completely solo, with Dyslexia (VI 5.10d A4) in the Ribbon Falls Amphitheater. The route was aptly named. Ellie battled a terrible case of dyslexia that often complicated her climbing. Despite these challenges, an early ascent of El Cap’s North America Wall (5.8 C3) and a solo of Never Never Land (5.10a) earned Ellie’s place among the Valley’s legends. Lauren was able to digitize and preserve Ellie’s collection of slides and prints as well, a few of which are featured here.

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One of the greatest gifts of working on this book came in the form of a few phone conversations with Liz Robbins. Liz is the author of one of my favorite pieces in the book, a story written years ago for Alpinist magazine that tells of her experience establishing the first ascent of The Nutcracker Suite (5.8), the first route in Yosemite to be climbed entirely on clean protection. The Nutcracker, as it is commonly known today, was the first route I ever climbed in Yosemite, years before I ended up working on the Search & Rescue team. Having driven all through the night from the mountain West, across the wide open sagebrush of Nevada, up through the winding granite slabs of Tuolumne, and down, at long last, to Yosemite Valley, I woke up at dawn, claimed my spot in Camp 4, and went straight to the Manure Pile Buttress. I once read that a “classic” climb must be at least one, if not all, of these three things: aesthetically pleasing, historically significant, and full of spectacular climbing. The Nutcracker Suite has it all, and it made for an unforgettable first Yosemite experience.

Ellie Hawkins on a solo ascent of Never Never Land (5.10a), Yosemite Valley National Park, CA. Land of the Central Sierra Miwok people. Bruce Hawkins

It’s been more than five years since that first Valley climb, and when I told Liz about my experience climbing it, we realized that because of her and Royal’s decision not to place pitons, the route climbs just about the same way today as it did during her first ascent. Of course, it is greasy with chalk and rubber from thousands of ascents, but it is not scarred the way other Yosemite routes are. Where I smeared, Liz had smeared, and where I stuffed my fingers in the crack, so had she.

Barb Eastman walking out the infamous Thank God Ledge during the first all-female ascent of Half Dome’s Regular Northwest Face(5.9C1),1976. AAC member Molly Higgins

At the end of the story, Liz expresses the mental tug-of-war she often engaged in when climbing. Her doubts about her abilities echoed my own insecurities about the making of this book. Who was I to engage in such an important project? But, as did Liz, I found time and time again that I’d yet to come across the problem that demanded more of me than I could give. Of course, this book is not perfect. There are holes—gaping ones—ones that jump out at me baring teeth and ones that, surely, I will see more clearly with time. But soon we will have in our hands the stories of 38 women who have, at one time or another, found themselves at the center of Yosemite climbing. We start in 1938 and run smack into the present, and it would horrify my editor if she knew that I were still adding stories the day before my first draft was due. But just as Steck & Roper implored us to think of their 50 Classic Climbs as some classic climbs and not the classic climbs, so too do these stories tell of the experiences of some women, not the women. Because there are so many more stories, so many more voices, so many more experiences worth telling and retelling. And as Liz so eloquently writes: I’ve only just begun the excavation.

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Lauren DeLaunay Miller served on the Yosemite Search & Rescue team while completing her book, Valley of Giants: Stories from Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing (Mountaineers Books, Spring 2022), an anthology of stories that document the history of women’s climbing in Yosemite National Park. Lauren lives in Bishop, CA where she is a founding board member of the Bishop Climbers Coalition and Coordinator for the AAC’s Bishop Highball Craggin’ Classic. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Journalism at the University of California in Berkeley.

AAC's Guidebook to Membership is Here

Cover photo by Drew Smith.

Our 2019 Guidebook to Membership is here! The Guidebook serves as a storyboard and yearbook as well as a literal guidebook to Club member benefits. The majority of each issue is dedicated to member photos and stories, working to define (and redefine) the ever-changing faces of American climbing and the Club that serves to unite them. From mountain art to community issues to conservation and advocacy stories, the Guidebook covers many important topics from a unique member-perspective. So, flip on through and get inspired. You might even find a new discount that you didn't even know you had.

Some stories we’re particularly excited about this year include:

• Art for the In-Betweens: Artist Spotlight, by Brooklyn Bell

• Navajo Rising: An Indigenous Emergence Story, by Aaron Mike

• Glacial Views: A Climate Scientist Reflects, by Seth Campbell

• 1Climb, Infinite Potential: Kevin Jorgeson Breaks Down Walls by Building them

• On Pushing: A Grief Story, by Madaleine Sorkin

• An Ode to Mobility: the Range of Motion Project Tackles Cotopaxi, by Lauren Panasewicz

…and there’s so much more, including tear-out-and-send policy postcards by Jill Pelto.

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The 2018 Guidebook to Membership is Here!

The 2018 Guidebook to Membership is here! The Guidebook is our Club’s collective yearbook. This year’s issue, “the changing faces of the AAC”, features stories and photos by some incredible changemakers in our community as well as information about AAC programs and opportunities. We hope you find it inspiring and informative! If you’ve opted to receive our print publications, you should see it in your mailbox any day now. You can also view the Guidebook online.

Cover photo by Austin Siadak. 

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