American Alpine Club’s 2026 Gala Auction Is Now Open

The American Alpine Club’s 2026 Annual Gala silent auction is now open! With dozens of unique packages up for bid, climbers can find one-of-a-kind artwork, sought-after gear, unforgettable experiences, and more while supporting the AAC’s mission to unite climbers and advance climbing.

This year’s auction features gear from brands that support the Club’s work, original artwork and photography, and memorabilia. Highlights include original photo prints by the late Bradford Washburn, a 1940s collection of the American Alpine Journal, stays at AAC lodging facilities, The North Face’s new Universal One Bag, and opportunities to get out in the mountains with professional climbers like Eddie Taylor.

Whether you’re looking to upgrade your kit, bring a piece of climbing history home, or plan your next adventure, the auction offers something for everyone. And every winning bid helps support the AAC’s year-round work.

The bidding continues at the Gala. In addition to the silent auction, three items will be available through the live auction at the Annual Gala on October 24 in Golden, Colorado: a backcountry ski adventure with Brody Leven, a Bishop climbing adventure with Nina Williams, and an original, signed Bradford Washburn photograph.

Don’t miss your chance to find something special and support the climbing community.

The Line—Old Traditions and New Development on Mt. Kenya

Peter Muambi Naituli on Rainmaker, a new route at the Temple near Mt. Kenya. Photo by Danny Skilton.

Mount Kenya: The Heart and Soul of African Alpine Climbing, this year’s “Recon” article in the American Alpine Journal, offers an in-depth look at Africa’s second-highest mountain and its extraordinary cultural and climbing history. Ian Thorpe, chairperson and librarian of the Mountain Club of Kenya, wrote this story, which describes more than 175 years of recorded history, plus delves into legends on the mountain going much farther back. One tale that arrived too late for Ian’s article describes a difficult new route on a Mt. Kenya satellite called the Temple. We’re sharing that report here, along with some reflections on the mountain by Katie Ives, who edited Ian’s piece.

Rainmaker: New Route at the Temple

Mt. Kenya has long drawn climbers to its two highest peaks, Batian (5,199m) and Nelion (5,188m). Beyond the famous summits, there is an extraordinary amount of unclimbed rock nearby. On the dramatic Temple cliffs, rising above Lake Michaelson and topping out at Mintos Camp (4,300m), several hours’ walk from the road, there were only four recorded climbs, dating from 1971 and 2004. Our new line, Rainmaker, and the other four routes share some of the most impressive steep walls in Kenya, with stellar exposure and striking crack systems. 

In August 2025, my Colombian friend Marcos Gonzalez and I were on Batian to support the Mountain Club of Kenya in its effort to equip the standard north face route with safe rappel anchors. With a few days to spare, we headed to Mintos Camp and worked on cleaning an obvious line on the cliffs below, culminating in an overhanging corner crack that would be the crux of the climb. Rain and loose rock left us short of time, and we headed home so Marcos could fly back to his day job of driving trains around Switzerland. 

Atop the Temple. Photo by Danny Skilton.

A weekend trip from Nairobi in February 2026 to send the route with Harmen den Braber was washed out. Rain and snow descended from the peaks and chased us back down to Embu, where we shared a tasty meal of barbecued goat meat called nyama choma. 

In March, I returned with Peter Muambi Naituli, Kenya’s strongest climber, alongside local guide Stanley Macharia and photographer Danny Skilton . The rain came along, too. On Mt. Kenya, local tradition holds that sacrifice can summon rain; our offering was repeated soaked approaches, torn skin, dropped gear, and relentless enthusiasm. By this point, Rainmaker was the only possible name for our new route.

After several more days of cleaning, working the harder pitches, and adding occasional bolts in sections of dubious rock, we completed the first ascent of Rainmaker (140m, 6c+/5.11c), a six-pitch trad line with breathtaking views. Easily reached from Mintos Camp, it hints at the vast undeveloped potential of Mt. Kenya’s surrounding walls.

—Giovanni Trambaiolo, Australia/Kenya

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Marcos Gonzalez working on an earlier attempt at Rainmaker, with Lake Michaelson in the distance. Photo by Giovanni Trambaiolo.

Mt. Kenya: Beyond the Guidebooks

We asked Katie Ives, who spent several months collaborating with Ian Thorpe on his Recon feature for the new AAJ, to share some of what she took away from their work. Ives is the former editor of Alpinist, author of Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Dreams, and an editorial director of Desire Lines Collective.

In your work on this story, what did you learn about Mt. Kenya that intrigued you the most? 

Thumbe Mathenge in 1973 during the first ascent of the Diamond Couloir on Mt. Kenya. Photo by Phil Snyder.

When many Western readers of mountain literature think of Mt. Kenya, they might picture the famous British duo of Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman and the classic 1930 adventure on the pinnacled west ridge of Batian, the mountain’s highest summit. Or, readers might recall the wild tale of the Italian prisoners of war who became so obsessed with Mt. Kenya in 1943 that they improvised climbing gear (using scrap metal and mosquito-net cord, among other scavenged materials), broke out of a British camp in Nanyuki, trekked for miles to summit Lenana, the massif’s third-highest point, and then, having nowhere else to go until the war ended, snuck back into their prison.

But there are also stories of local and indigenous Kenyan climbers that deserve to be widely known. As Ian Thorpe writes, Mt. Kenya is sacred to nearby residents—including Gĩkũyũ, Embu, Meru, and Maasai people—and known to them as Kĩrĩnyaga, Kîrîmaara, and Ol Donyo Keri. Gĩkũyũ stories depict a legendary ascent by the ancestor of their people who was taken to the summit by the deity Ngai. Other Kenyans have long made pilgrimages to the massif, such as the Meru preacher Ephraim M’Ikiara, who soloed Nelion (Mt. Kenya’s second-highest summit) barefoot in 1979. 

When you look at the progression of technical routes, speed climbing, and other records, Kenyans appear again and again as protagonists: Gĩkũyũ mountain guide Ali Mucemi, who used dry-tooling techniques while guiding Nelion in 1941; Gĩkũyũ mountain rescuer Thumbi Mathenge, who was one of the first ascensionists of the iconic Diamond Couloir in 1973; Kenyan ultrarunner Cheruiyot Kirui, who completed three round trips from park-entrance gates to the summit of Lenana, by three different routes, in less than 24 hours in 2021; and Peter Muambi Naituli, a climber of Meru descent who has accomplished impressive ascents around the massif and elsewhere in Kenya—among many others. 

To work toward an accurate and inclusive understanding of world mountaineering, history writers and editors need to recognize the significant roles of Kenyans and other African climbers. 

Did one story of Kenyan climbers particularly move you?

I remain profoundly moved by the story of Peter Muambi Naituli’s barefoot free solo of the Southeast Gully (350m, UIAA III) of Point John, which he completed in 2020, seeking a more intimate connection with the massif: how he sought his Meru grandmother’s blessing before the climb, and how her protective song echoed in his mind as he made his way over cold, sharp rock and through windblown clouds. The tale combines both technical mountaineering and ancestral tradition. More than just another recorded first, it reflects deeper understandings of what climbing feats and philosophies can be. 

How did learning more about the mountaineering history of Mt. Kenya influence your understanding of history in other ranges? 

The climbing stories of Mt. Kenya remind us that there is so much complexity, nuance, diversity, and possibility to encounter beneath the surface of mountaineering records. There’s a tendency among many Westerners to think of mountaineering history as primarily the evolution of a particular form of the pursuit that arose in Europe, documented by journal articles, alpine clubs, and various other institutions. Yet when you look more closely at archives and speak with local mountain communities, you encounter many other cultural traditions of climbing to high places—at times preserved in oral histories, archaeological traces, artifacts, and pilgrimage routes. 

As Malawi climber and researcher Ed Nhlane once told me, we can learn to appreciate the multitudes of local practices that have emerged in different ranges in Africa and other continents—including centuries-old customs that continue today. By expanding our definitions of mountaineering, we can strive to see more of the immense variety of protagonists, styles, philosophies, motivations, and cultures of ascent. These stories can inspire more expansive, creative, and ecologically sustainable visions of alpinism.

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Grand Ole Roadtrip

Images Courtesy of the Howard Lukens Collection

Lodging Spotlight by Sierra McGivney

Originally Published in Guidebook XIX.

A boxy light blue Ford van rattled down the road, well equipped with a cassette player and six cassettes—Springsteen, Little Feat, Steely Dan, The Allman Brothers Band, Robert Palmer, Bob Dylan—a beanbag chair (the prime spot), and six East Coasters. Dieter Klose, Angus Thuermer, Mike Kurle, Karen Kurle-Edwards, Howard Lukens, and Barry Rugo were looking for adventure, and they were convinced that Wyoming had it in abundance. They had heard whispers at Seneca Rocks, the Gunks, and Carderock—their usual stomping grounds—that the Tetons were the place to learn what they were made of.

It was 1976, the year of Charlie’s Angels, The Eagles’ Hotel California, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, Jimmy Carter winning the presidential election, and the ongoing Cold War and the 1970s energy crisis. In 1976, climbers were still pounding pitons, but there was a clear shift in this decade toward alpine-style ascents, clean climbing, and speed records. The Tetons promised to be a much bigger playground for the skills these climbers had honed in their backyards. So with swami belts, EB climbing shoes, and Chouinard Hexes and Stoppers stuffed into the back of the van, they headed west.

A different expectation for young people existed at the time. Children and teenagers were able to be free-range in a way that is rare today. Dieter Klose, now best known for his ascents on Devils Thumb, grew up with German parents who were both proud of and worried about his climbing. He first traveled out to the Tetons at age 15 without his parents or supervision, tagging along with an “older climber” in his late teens or early 20s. Begrudgingly, for Klose, they climbed Mt. Moran three times. This trip would be different.

Karen Kurle-Edwards and Mike Kurle were brother and sister. Karen’s mom didn’t get her. Not long before they left for Wyoming, their mother had told Kurle-Edwards, “You have to quit going everywhere, you’re going to have gone everywhere by the time you’re 25.” Kurle-Edwards wasn’t going to let that stop her. Howard Lukens, now Treasurer of the AAC Board of Directors, was Kurle’s friend from high school. Lukens had been invited on the trip at the last minute after another climber had taken a fall and gotten injured.

Angus Thuermer recalls meeting the group at Seneca Rocks through Barry Rugo. Thuermer was the most experienced climber of the bunch; he had climbed with the Yale Mountaineering Club. Founded in 1947, the club focused on training students in rock climbing and mountaineering techniques. Rugo and Klose went to the same high school and were in the same Explorer troop (Senior Boy Scout troop) as Kurle and Kurle-Edwards. The knotted threads of community were tied, and the group was formed. The possibilities of grand climbing adventures were on the horizon.

Thuermer recalls that the climbing itself wasn’t their only compass. The promise of a cheap bed and a community of climbers was pulling them west as well. His stay at the Grand Teton Climbers’ Ranch would end up being “quite influential in me becoming an alpinist and a climber.”

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Historic Roots

That rickety van would soon find itself parked in front of the newly minted Grand Teton Climbers’ Ranch (GTCR), which had opened six years prior. After the Jenny Lake climbers’ camp was shut down in 1966, it was hard for climbers to find camping spots, as outdoor recreation and climbing in the United States were on the rise, and the National Park Service had to impose limits on campground use.

The solution was simple: The vacant Double Diamond Ranch, which once offered cabins snuggled at the base of the Tetons to tourists, but was sold to the National Park in 1964, would be leased out to the American Alpine Club starting on January 1, 1970, to provide climbers with cheap, one-dollar-a-day, modest lodging. Lodgers did not need to be affiliated with the Club, but they did need to be a climber.

Nick Clinch, the American Alpine Club President at the time, clearly had a vision: adding bunk beds and imagining the main lodge to be a place of gathering on rainy days to tell “stories of high daring and plan future climbs.” He even dreamed that someone would donate a projector and slides—generating a culture of trip reports and climbing presentations. The Ranch needed some work, but it wasn’t anything the AAC, with the help of volunteers, donors, members, and climbers passing through, couldn’t handle.

Clinch wrote, “Although the American Alpine Club has assumed the obligation…for the operation of the ranch, the ranch does not belong to the Club. It belongs to all climbers, just as it is open to all climbers. It is your ranch and needs your assistance to make it a success.”

Image Courtesy of the Howard Lukens Collection

Image Courtesy of the Howard Lukens Collection

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Leap of Faith

Enclosure Ice Couloir (800’, 6 pitches, III 5.6 AI3) had it all: trad, ice, and snow—the perfect mix for the ultimate alpine adventure. That summer of 1976, Thuermer and Klose were high up in the couloir when Klose took over the lead, preparing to switch from ice to rock. Klose climbed into a small dihedral and continued traversing to the left, unsure of the route. He stepped on several loose blocks in the inside corner of the open book, feeling the disconcerting wobble with each move as he progressed upward. Without thinking of Thuermer, he trundled the rocks. Once Thuermer followed, he got to the open book—but all of the footholds were gone.

“What do you want me to do here?” Thuermer called out to Klose.

“Jump, Angus!” was Klose’s response.

They did not climb together again, but laugh about it today. This climb was full-on, involving hard ice climbing, loose rock, and unsure footing. But wasn’t that the point? To make mistakes and learn, with a warm bed and camaraderie waiting for you at the Ranch.

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Out of the Frying Pan

The Skillet Couloir descends from the summit and pools into the Skillet Glacier, creating a pan-like shape on the side of Mt. Moran, a dramatic mountain above Leigh and Jackson lakes. Skillet Glacier is an ultraclassic ski line in the colder months, but by early summer, the couloir is a steep snow line. When the snow melts out, it turns into the CMC Route, an alpine trad climb.

Lukens and Kurle had reached the top of the Skillet Couloir in stellar conditions, the sun beaming down on the snow, making the day warm and inviting—so warm that Kurle had ditched his shirt, a sunburn starting to form.

“How are we going to get down?” asked Lukens. The full extent of the two young Virginians’ glacier skills had come from Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills.

Kurle replied that they would plunge-step, a technique that involves keeping your center of gravity low and leading with your heel as you kick steps through soft snow. Lukens began setting up a boot-axe belay—flying by the seat of his pants and some half-remembered book knowledge—when, two plunge steps later, Kurle plummeted head over heels down the couloir. The warm snow had balled up on his crampons, making it hard for the sharp points to dig into the mush.

Lukens could only watch as the rope unspooled and finally became taut, pulling him down the glacier. The slope zipped by as Lukens frantically tried to stop himself. They were heading straight for the edge of the glacier, an unknown drop-off waiting for them. Miraculously, their unintentional glissade slowed until they stopped 50 yards from the edge.

Mt. Moran is relatively remote, so the pair had to bushwhack for miles, which made their epic even longer. Kurle’s ankle had suffered from the fall, and his sunburn had deepened. To make it worse, he kept tripping and falling into brush-covered streams, cursing up a storm. Lukens calmed him down and motivated him to keep going. They continued like this until they reached the road.

Kurle finally dug his heels in. “I can’t go another inch,” he told his friend. Lukens threw his thumb out, hoping to hitchhike, but the luck they had on the glacier’s edge had seemingly evaporated. All of a sudden, like an angel from afar, Kurle-Edwards pulled up in the van.

If Kurle-Edwards hadn’t driven by, things would have gotten dire. “We’d probably still be out there,” said Lukens.

Once back at the Climbers’ Ranch, starving after not eating in over 24 hours, Lukens, looking like hell, approached a guy cooking at the pavilion, asking if he had any food. The climber directed him to half a can of pea soup. Lukens grabbed it off the stove and guzzled the soup down. To this day, Lukens loves green pea soup.

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Lightning Strikes Twice

Klose and Kurle-Edwards had summited Middle Teton. As they were rappelling down, their gear started to click. Kurle-Edwards's hair was sticking out of her helmet, Klose laughing at the strands poking through. Hot, clear summer days in the Tetons can turn dangerous quickly, high up in the alpine. Midday thunderstorms are common and can be deadly to climbers with metal on their harnesses up at 7,000 feet. Stopping at a notch, Klose and Kurle-Edwards turned to each other, at a loss for what to do. Lightning was buzzing in the air.

Kurle-Edwards, afraid of being electrocuted, ditched her ice axe, despite Klose's warning about the ice axe's importance. They decided to put all their gear on one side of the notch and scramble to the other side. Clinging to the rock, they had no choice but to wait out the storm and hoped that they would make it through.

"Lightning was flashing in front of us. It was really terrifying," said Kurle-Edwards.

Over on Symmetry Spire near Jenny Lake, Thuermer, Kurle, Rugo, and Lukens were in a similar situation when the storm came in. Lightning, thunder, and snow squalls descended. Their gear buzzed from the electricity, and snow blew up the rock face.

"It was like [someone] was throwing sticks of dynamite at us," said Kurle.

The group of four had been split into two, climbing different routes on the spire Direct Jensen Ridge (10 pitches, I|I 5.8) and Durrance Ridge (8 pitches, I| 5.6) — but were able to converge on a ledge. Frightened, they waited out the storm. Everyone huddled on the ledge, hoping that the next lightning strike wouldn't fry them. The storm, like all storms, passed, and the lightning strikes slowly became fewer and farther between. The sun peered out, as if ignorant of the chaos that had come minutes before. They tied their ropes together to do a longer rappel, slinging a rock flake. Rugo started rappelling, jumping down the rock face quickly. The other three looked on in horror as the flake shook and trembled, thinking it would surely blow. Frantically, they screamed for Rugo to stop. Rugo continued downward, completely unaware of the precarious anchor his life was dependent on, the edge he was teetering on.

Lukens's thoughts skated ahead if Rugo fell, both the rope and Rugo would be gone into the abyss, leaving the group stranded with no way to call for help and Rugo dead.

But soon enough, Rugo was off rappel. The flake had held. Lukens, Thuermer, and Kurle looked at each other, pale, their faces drained after their glimpse of the grim reaper. The three set up a new anchor promptly and cautiously. Shaken from the incident and the lightning, they began rappelling.

Both groups had known they should be done climbing betore midday, but had spent more time route-finding than they had planned. They trudged back to the safety of GTCR, met with laughter and camaraderie, the group grateful to have made it down unscathed.

The trip was a test of will, uncertainty, and mountain skills. The GTCR provided a refuge after the storm, the epics, the wins, and the failures. It was a place you could meet climbing partners and climbing heroes, or find kindred spirits and a can of soup around a campfire.

"The Climbers' Ranch has always been very important," said Thuermer, "and I think this little group, it's sort of-it's a story that could be told by dozens and dozens of other climbers and teams."

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Into the Fire

While they headed east and all went their separate ways after the summer of 1976, Thuermer felt called to return to the Tetons and settled in Jackson in 1978, getting a job as a pressman at the Jackson Hole News.

Lightning wasn't the only powerful force to contend with in the dry air of the Tetons. By the 1980s, fires in the park had become a huge debate in the Tetons. Previously, American land managers had immediately squashed the smallest wildfires. During the '70s, scientists began advocating for letting fires burn in the Mountain West, due to the unnatural buildup of live and dead trees, pine needles, shrubs, and grasses, all of which would contribute to a significant source of fuel that wouldn't be present in natural circumstances, when fires weren't mitigated by humans. As the Park Service has noted, Indigenous peoples have long practiced intentional burning in the Northern Rockies, "clearing undergrowth, creating wildlife habitat, supporting hunting strategies, reducing fire risk, and stimulating the growth of key food sources, such as huckleberries."

As the research piled up, the Park Service decided to let natural fires burn as long as they didn't impact the public.

Image by Angus Thuermer

Small to moderately sized fires burned in the '80s with no harm, but in 1985, a fire started near park housing. NPS immediately tried to put it out, but high winds had another idea, escalating the situation.

Thuermer had become a reporter at the Jackson Hole News at this point, he had more than a personal interest in the happenings within Grand Teton National Park. Hearing about the fire, he threw on a yellow Patagonia windbreaker and snuck into the chaos, hoping to blend in with the firefighters. The superintendent and a park ranger were on their way out when they stopped him. His disguise hadn't worked.

In classic journalist fashion, Thuermer said: 'You can't stop me! This is breaking news!' They let him go but told him they weren't responsible for any damage to his truck. By the time he arrived, the fire had spread to the GTCR, burning several buildings.

Thuermer photographed the whole thing. As he was walking around, he saw an ember land on the boardwalk in front of the Climbers' Ranch main lodge. The ember looked like it could keep the fire going, so he called a firefighter over, and they put it out. Thanks to Thuermer, a section of the Climbers' Ranch may have been saved. The burned down buildings were rebuilt with help from members of the Club, like Leigh Ortenburger.

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Fifty years later, the GTCR still calls to Lukens; he's returned a handful of times, with a trip coming up this summer. "It's my favorite place in the world," said Lukens. Kurle and Lukens still climb and ski together, always looking for their next adventure. Klose no longer climbs due to a back injury, but he made sure his last climb was a good one: the Grand. "It was wonderful," he reminisced from his van on the Oregon Coast. Thuermer still lives in Jackson Hole and currently works as the natural resources reporter for WyoFile. Kurle-Edwards returned to the Tetons shortly after and now loves walking meditation, through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, the Colorado Trail, the Camino del Norte, and more, taking each step slowly so she doesn't miss a thing. Rugo landed in the Northeast. His climbing career spanned the world soloing Open Cockpit (5.11 +) in the Gunks and putting up a three-pitch 5.10 in Telluride in the '80s; attempting Devils Thumb and Choktoi, summiting Everest and serving as the AAC New England Section Chair in the '90s.

From the Double Diamond Ranch days, to fighting fires, to rebuilding the Ranch, to the Historic Lodge at the GTCR being placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, the GTCR has remained at the foot of the Grand, sustained by the dreams of the climbers who have shaped it again and again with their time, skills, and donations. As Clinch manifested all those years ago, the Grand Teton Climbers' Ranch is not ours; it is yours.

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Crack of Fear

Image from the Detterline Collection, Courtesy of the AAC Library

Rewind the Climb with Diana Boyer

Originally Published in Guidebook XIX.

On the jagged skyline north of Estes Park, Colorado, rises a formidable formation, the Twin Owls, its south face split by an obvious crack up a leaning corner. From a distance, the climb looks approachable, curving up toward the summit, but the fact that the crack is visible from so far belies its inviting disposition. In fact, this cavernous, “wider than wide” Lumpy Ridge fissure is infamous, and only the naive go into it blindly. Its smooth walls offer few options for face holds except for the occasional crystals for those who are unwilling or lack the know-how to offwidth. Crystal pinching can only take a person so far until their fingertips are blown and split from the rock’s sandpaper texture. You’d think that the foreboding name, which only perpetuates the mystique and lore surrounding this historical offwidth, might be a bit of a clue.

At 5.10d—a notorious offwidth grade that can mean basically anything—Crack of Fear is a testament to history. Over the years, it’s become known as a cruel sandbag. Its Mountain Project page is littered with stories of comical attempts and harrowing epics. A rather hysterical and self-deprecating account from Steve “Crusher” Bartlett, a legendary desert-tower climber, reads, “I’m too fat to do this! The crux would be easier for skinnier folks, who can keep their hips in the crack as they are easing up towards the beckoning (but still tiny) face holds. This is a masochistic struggle.” George Bell writes, “My only ‘attempt’ at this route was in 1983, when I was visiting the area and a buddy who lived in Boulder suggested we ‘check it out.’ Knowing nothing of the route, I foolishly agreed, figuring my friend probably wanted to lead it anyway. We got to the base, and there was a party ahead of us.… Some guy was following the first pitch, and man it looked horrendous!” After realizing their gear wasn’t big enough, they never left the ground, walking away with their tails between their legs. People aren’t rushing to climb Crack of Fear, a fact further underscored by Lenore Sparks, who writes, “This climb is sweet because you don’t have to wait in line for it.”

Layton Kor and Paul Mayrose made the three-pitch climb’s first ascent in 1963. Kor was one of the most prolific first ascensionists of the 1960s, leaving his mark on American climbing with first ascents of The Naked Edge in Eldorado Canyon State Park, Finger of Fate on the Titan, the Kor-Ingalls Route on Castleton Tower, and countless other climbs. On Crack of Fear, the first 30 feet start off fairly easy with hand jams along a pillar called the Rat’s Tooth, with the occasional stance to rest and assess before the real fight begins. For the next 200 feet, clear to the summit, the crack morphs into a wide, physical beast. On Kor’s ascent, when he reached the crux on pitch two about 100 feet up, he managed to drill a bolt while balancing on a ledge. From there, it’s surmised that he used the bolt as a point of aid, placing one more bolt on that same pitch. These bolts helped him surmount a difficult undercling section that briefly leaves the offwidth before requiring a committing move back into the crack above the roof, allowing him to eventually complete the climb. Sixty-plus years later, Kor’s bolts are still in the rock—historical artifacts, but dubious protection.

While Crack of Fear is only three pitches long, it required—and requires—skills that are also key for big-wall climbing. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, climbers were focused primarily on walls, setting their sights on objectives like Half Dome, the Nose, the Dihedral Wall, and the Salathé Wall in Yosemite Valley. With free climbing standards and gear not what they are today, and with a mountaineering-informed ethos centered on getting to the top by whatever means, climbers were rarely hesitant to aid when merited: If a section got too hard or scary, hammering in a pin or drilling a bolt as a quick resting point or point of aid was often the norm. Hence Kor and Mayrose’s two bolts on the route—and only a partial free ascent.

Another big-wall skill at play on Crack of Fear is offwidth climbing. Knowing how to climb wide is a necessary skill in any big-wall aspirant’s tool kit. The widest gear available at the time was large, V-shaped aluminum pitons called “bongs,” first commercially produced by Yvon Chouinard and Tom Frost, and named for the “bong-bong” sound they made when hammered into a crack. They varied in width, with the biggest around four to six inches. Compared to modern offwidth cams, they were quite small, which meant protecting wide climbs was challenging and not always guaranteed. A level of bravery was required—a stepping into the unknown. There was often uncertainty as to whether a climb would even take gear, so the mindset was to keep moving and hope to reach the next belay before running out of energy. With their rudimentary gear, it’s likely Kor understood from the ground he was taking a leap of faith climbing something so wide, hence the name Crack of Fear.

Image from the Detterline Collection, Courtesy of the AAC Library

Shortly after Kor and Mayrose’s first ascent, Royal Robbins attempted to free the route. During that era, Robbins was (and remains) a well-known pioneer of American rock climbing. He helped forge the path for free climbing, making notable ascents such as freeing America’s first 5.9, Open Book at Tahquitz Rock, in 1952, and later, in 1964, the first free ascent of Danse Macabre (5.10) on Devils Tower. When he failed to free Crack of Fear, its reputation only grew. Who would get the first free ascent?

Back in the mid-1960s, Jamie Logan was an eager kid excited to prove herself in the world of climbing. After moving to Boulder to attend the University of Colorado, she soon flunked out, spending all of her time climbing instead. Logan was always in search of partners to belay her on the next challenging climb, but finding consistent ones wasn’t easy at first. It was only when she gained recognition for her prowess on the rock at Castle Rock in Boulder Canyon that she found her inner circle—all of whom, Logan included, would go on to become climbing legends. Castle Rock remains a popular crag for its variety of stellar crack climbs. It was there that she ran into Royal Robbins and Pat Ament top-roping Final Exam, a route rated 5.11a by today’s standards, which they hoped to free climb (and eventually did in 1964). Logan, excited to have found fellow climbers, asked if she could try. Surprised and unsure of her abilities, they hesitantly said yes. She shocked them when she onsighted. From then on, it was clear Logan was part of the next generation of climbers pushing free climbing forward.

Logan was only 19 years old when, in 1966, she was part of the first free ascent of Crack of Fear with Chris Fredericks. That year, Fredericks flew from California, intending to free it, but he needed a partner. Fredericks was a methodical and sometimes slow climber. His lack of speed accommodated his thoughtful technique, helping him accomplish many first ascents, such as the South Face on Yosemite’s Washington Column in 1964 and Snake Dike (5.7) on Half Dome in 1965. Word spread, and he heard Logan was a strong crack climber. Logan loved climbing Grand Giraffe in Eldorado Canyon, another offwidth that requires its own bag of tricks. At the time, it was 5.8; today, it’s 5.10a. Logan was recruited.

Image from the Detterline Collection, Courtesy of the AAC Library

In the heat of summer, Fredericks, Logan, and a third (tentatively remembered as Ken Kelly) hiked to the base of the Twin Owls. Wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt, a swami belt, and leather Kronhofer climbing shoes, Logan took the first pitch but struggled with the start of the offwidth, ending the lead. After pounding in a four-inch bong (the biggest piece they had with them), Logan attempted to wriggle upward, but was having little luck. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” Logan recalls. “I was just skinny and stoked.” Fredericks lost patience and told Logan to come back down, lowering her off the bong. From there, Fredericks took over leading. He climbed to the first ledge, built an anchor, and belayed Logan and Kelly up.

Exhausted from the sheer physicality of the first small section of offwidth on the first pitch, Kelly vomited at the ledge and had to be lowered to the ground, leaving Logan and Fredericks to continue the quest. The next 70 feet were the true crux. At the start of the second pitch, there is a small foot rail, which allowed Fredericks to establish himself in the offwidth. Once he left the safety of the rail, the crack widened, opening its coarse granite jaws, making it difficult for Fredericks to find any security. By shoving his heels together and using his inside knee to maintain progress, he slowly inched up. After clipping one of Kor’s bolts, he pushed and grunted toward another gear placement. “You so wanted to stand on the bolt,” Logan recounts, but they were committed to a free ascent. Fredericks managed to find an armbar, forming a chicken-wing, and hammered a one-inch angle into a thin crack above him. He then traversed across the face before re-entering the crack, completing the most difficult pitch.

Now came Logan’s turn to second. Skinnier than Fredericks, she could squeeze deeper into the crack. “I’m making progress like a quarter inch at a time [or] a half inch at a time. I get up there, and I remember grabbing this little tiny edge, and I just worked it,” Logan says. When she reached the piton Fredericks had placed, she was too pumped to clean it, so she grabbed the carabiner off the pin and continued upward, knowing she’d owe him a one-inch angle later. She emerged from the crack a bloody, excited mess, her arms shredded from its sharp granite walls.

Fredericks led the final pitch, and together they completed the first free ascent. Logan told him she couldn’t wait to share the news with the climbing community back in Boulder. Fredericks replied, “You know, that’s not really why we’re supposed to do this.”

At the time, Crack of Fear was one of the hardest climbs in the country at 5.10. Rating a climb 5.10 meant it was extremely difficult, but acceptance of the grade took time. Logan recalls how there were many mathematicians and scientists in the climbing world during the 1960s who would gladly argue that 5.10 was not a “real” number, therefore nonsensical as a climbing grade. Climbers like David Rearick, who, with Bob Kamps, made the first ascent of the Diamond on Longs Peak and had a Ph.D. in mathematics, and Frank Sacherer, a legendary free climber in Yosemite who would go on to work as a theoretical physicist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, argued against expanding the Yosemite Decimal System beyond 5.9. But as climbing progressed, and 5.9 and 5.9+ were no longer sufficient, 5.10 became the new standard. In the 1970s, Jim Bridwell proposed adding letter grades (a–d) to further differentiate difficulty from 5.10 on up.

Free climbing was in its nascence. On the popular climbs of the era, there was often a plethora of “fixed pins,” thanks to pioneering climbers either using soft angle-iron pins that were hard to remove or, later, overdriving their chromoly steel pitons into cracks and seams. Over time, these routes became littered with fixed gear, unintentionally making them better protected and/or leaving pin scars that could be used as handholds for free ascents. “There was this interim period of lots of pins,” says Logan. With more pins, free climbing became more efficient than aid climbing. At the time, many top climbers had their sights set on Yosemite’s big walls. An essential part of completing such big objectives was speed, and if a climber was strong enough to climb through sections without hanging or using aiders, it saved a lot of time—as did clipping fixed pins as pro. As time passed, climbers like Derek Hersey, a British rock jock who specialized in free soloing, took on Crack of Fear. It’s said he onsight free soloed it, believing it to be just another 5.10, a grade well within his wheelhouse. He was sorely mistaken, however, and spent hours surviving his way up, convinced he might die but ultimately reaching the summit. He showed up to work the next night, half his body bloody, raw, and swollen from crushing himself into the crack.

Today, gear has drastically improved. Modern cams are lighter, easier to place, versatile, and safer than the bong-bongs of yore—they cover a wider range of crack sizes, including offwidths. Yet Crack of Fear retains its aura. Kelly Cordes, Estes Park local legend, climber, and writer, last climbed it 20 years ago. “I’ve only climbed it once, basically got my ass kicked so bad that my friend had to lead the two harder pitches, and I’ve avoided it ever since. It felt so utterly desperate to me that I just gave up on ever trying again,” Cordes says. “The cool thing about it, I think, is how much respect it still garners. I don’t think anyone just strolls up to it and finds it easy; the [5.10d] grade is virtually meaningless and absurd, but somehow, fitting.”

Unlike Cordes, Eddie Taylor became obsessed. The Colorado-based climber, teacher, and track coach estimates trying it 15 times, most of those attempts in the fall of 2024. “The only reason I really wanted to try it was because someone told me it was a really good simulator for the Monster Offwidth,” Taylor says, referencing the 200-foot 5.11d crack that is considered one of the cruxes of El Capitan’s Free Rider (31 pitches, VI 5.13a).

In 2024, as Taylor trained for Free Rider, he headed up to try Crack of Fear with his climbing mentor, Cody Scarpella. When Scarpella, a granite wizard, struggled to figure out the crux, Taylor knew it must be extremely difficult. A year later, Taylor returned and was able to figure out the move that had stumped them both previously. He made it a goal to send the entire climb in one push, never leaving the crack, by linking the pitches together with one long rope. Choosing not to stop at the belay stances turned the climb into an endurance push. The idea was to build stamina for its offwidth cousin on Free Rider.

Though not an offwidth specialist, Taylor is a well-rounded climber, as any big-wall climber must be. “Definitely for a route that’s rated 10d, I put…more work [into it] than…[any other] 5.10 route,” Taylor says. Trying to find a continuous offwidth near the Front Range is like looking for a needle in a haystack—few other than Crack of Fear offer a sustained, continuous fight. It’s as if a little slice of Yosemite got lost and found itself in Estes Park instead.

Taylor and many other climbers agree that the climb is most likely somewhere in the 5.11c range, which many 5.10+ routes from that era likely are as well. Logan herself admits that with today’s modern grades, it would sit somewhere in the 5.11 range. Taylor eventually freed Crack of Fear, top-rope soloing it in a continuous pitch on a fixed line. It became part of his routine: getting out of work, driving up to Lumpy Ridge, and trying to squeeze in four or five laps before the sun set. When Taylor eventually attempted Free Rider, he found the Monster Offwidth to be much easier.

Believed to be the original bolts placed by Layton Kor.

Images: AAC VP of Media Shane Johnson

Similar to Taylor, two young retired British competition climbers, Alex Waterhouse and Billy Ridal, were pointed in the direction of Crack of Fear before they took on the Nose of El Capitan (VI 5.14a). With very little crack-climbing experience but an incredible amount of strength and technique, they freed the Nose in 2023. Logan, who was speaking at a conference with Waterhouse and Ridal, listened to the boys regale the crowd with their adventures and mishaps. At the end of their story, as Logan recalls, Ridal said, “But the hardest thing we did is we went to climb this crack in Estes Park, and people said it would be good training for us and that it was 5.10.”

Going in blind, without looking at the guidebook or reading Mountain Project, Waterhouse and Ridal set off into the wide—and quickly got their butts kicked. Waterhouse, leading on pitch two, accidentally dislodged their No. 6 cam, so that his only protection was the two rusty bolts placed by Layton Kor. Waterhouse was terrified. As the Brits described their harrowing ascent, Logan realized they were talking about Crack of Fear. Logan chuckles and says, “So that was kind of fun. It made me feel like I was a good rock climber.”

Inspired by the story behind the climb? Support the AAC archives, and help the AAC continue to preserve climbing history.

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How to Climb in Hueco

Photo by: Dawn Kish

By Sierra McGivney

Down in southern Texas, where tumbleweeds and cacti rule the desert, lies a bouldering mecca with a rich history and hundreds of problems waiting for you to climb.  With 300 days of sun and perfect holds carved into boulders, Hueco Tanks State Park has it all.

"It's a wonderland of boulders bristling with positive micro-flakes and peppered with gaping huecos; its enormous roofs, vein-bursting traverses, and pleasant mantle-free topouts; it's joyful jughauls, cerebral sequences, and impossible-looking problems that go." —John Sherman, Hueco Tanks Climbing and Bouldering

Highballs, Crimps, and Huecos, Oh My!

Hueco Tanks is the birthplace of the V grading system, the Yosemite of bouldering if you will. Climbers can find trad and sport climbs here, but they are few and far between. Hueco Tanks is the quintessential bouldering destination.

PC: Michael Lim

As Todd Skinner said in Desert Dreams, "This place is brutal. [But] if your elbows hold together and the tendons of your fingers hold together, then you'll leave Hueco stronger than you've ever been."

Hueco has a range of bouldering from V0 to V15. If you're just starting or looking to get stronger in the offseason or just love bouldering, Hueco Tanks is for you. Better Eat Your Wheaties, a V9 boulder problem, is an overhung crimp marathon that won't leave you missing your gym's moon board. If you love highball bouldering, The Maiden V0 is the must-climb highball—topping out at 35 feet; you won't want to look down. You are visiting Hueco, so you'll want to climb some of the world-famous holds: The Ghetto Simulator V2 follows an incredible line of chalked huecos up to a crux finish. Be warned, this climb may be greasy because of its popularity. 

North Mountain alone has 850 problems, so there are hundreds of options, grades, and climbing styles at Hueco. For more information about climbing in the area, check out the essential bouldering guide by Matt Wilder and Jason Kehl from the AAC Library. 

"I have traveled the world and have yet to see a place superior to Hueco Tanks in problem concentration or one that better embodies the inexplicable desire to progress that all climbers share. Hueco's rock quietly urges you to come closer, to take a look under all the roofs, touch the holds, and somehow gives you the audacity to try things you would never have dared before." —Scott Milton, Hueco Tanks: The Essential Guide to America's Bouldering Mecca

Training

Training is an important tactic for a successful and fun climbing trip. Since you'll be visiting Hueco during the winter months, you'll want to begin training in August or September. Next, you'll want to focus on a goal for your trip. Hueco is known for having lots of different climbing styles, so the more you narrow it down, the better. As there are hundreds of problems with varying levels of difficulty and style, you can get as specific as training for roof climbing V5 and up, or you can leave it as open as wanting to climb all of the highballs in the park—either way, you can build a solid base to be prepared for any type of climbing you'll come across in Hueco.

PC: Dawn Kish

Porphyritic syenite is no stranger to wearing down, and you are bound to find a few polished climbs. Train to improve your body tension and get good at using tiny feet. Hueco's classic and popular climbs have seen a lot of people and tend to be slippery, so improving both tension and foot placement will go a long way. 

Even if techy vertical walls and boulders call your name, improving roof skills will benefit your climbing at Hueco. Focus on strengthening your core and legs. If you have yet to explore climbing on a roof, practice heel hooks, toe hooks, and knee bars at your climbing gym. 

The last thing you'll want to focus on is power endurance. That might sound a bit out of place since bouldering requires only a handful of moves, but chances are you'll be throwing yourself at a boulder problem repeatedly. You'll want to be able to try moves all day until you send or collapse, so building up endurance should be in your training plan.

For a deeper dive into training, check out Power Company Climbing.

Pictographs and Problems: A Brief History

All aspects of Hueco are deeply rooted in a rich cultural history. Hueco Tanks is part of the Chihuahua desert ecoregion, the largest desert in North America. Though evidently known to climbers as an epic bouldering location, Hueco Tanks is also home to deeply important historical artifacts and a sacred site for several Indigenous cultures. The human history of Hueco spans thousands of years, possibly starting about 10,000 years ago, and the pictographs and petroglyphs there tell the story of many—they continue to be an important part of this sacred site for the Kiowa, Mescalero Apache, Comanche, and Tigua (or Ysleta del Sur Pueblo) tribes, who use the site for prayer and gatherings.

PC: Dawn Kish

The history that weaves together Hueco Tanks, making it such a unique place to climb, was a point of friction between the route establishers and the park rangers in the past. John "Vermin" Sherman arrived in the early 1980s, establishing over 400 classic boulder problems and the "V" rating system. 

"Along with great friends like Donny, Hardin, Chris Hill, and others, we got to develop the finest bouldering on the continent," says John Sherman in Hueco Tanks: The Essential Guide to America's Bouldering Mecca.

The act of bolting was illegal in the park until 1989, and since the park is mostly bouldering, this didn't prove to be a problem until Todd Skinner showed up, ready to bring challenging sport climbing to Hueco. 

Skinner spent winters climbing at Hueco Tanks, floating between campgrounds and friends' houses, and spent summers developing routes all over the world. He was known especially for the first free ascent of the Salathé Wall in Yosemite with Paul Piana in 1988. As time passed, he rented apartments or homes, becoming a hub for climbers. 

According to the article "When Legends Die, the Changing Face of Hueco Tanks," Skinner and friends would bolt routes at night, erroneously arguing that there was a loop-hole in the Park’s no-bolt rule—bolters had to be caught in the act, or such was Skinner’s interpretation. When morning rolled around, the route was legal to climb. In this way, Skinner put up Legends (5.13a) in 1987. 

PC: Michael Lim

The park rangers were not a fan of this, because Skinner and others were trespassing in order to use this supposed “loop-hole,” and clearly not acknowledging the spirit of the prohibition on bolting. After an unknown climber got caught bolting, the park banned rope climbing for three weeks in 1988. Tensions continued to rise as Hueco became a well-known destination for climbing in the 80s and 90s. But climbers were not the only user group putting pressure on this fragile environment. Between rowdy parties, destroyed vegetation, and defacement of the historic pictographs, Hueco couldn't handle the influx of visitors—hikers, tourists, locals, and climbers—and their impact on the landscape. Beginning September 1, 1998, reservations would be required to enter the park.

As climbers and the Park settled into these new ethics of engagement, Hueco climbing continued to make a name for itself as a unique destination and community. Skinner, Amy Whisler, Carol Gogas, and John Gogas purchased the land currently known as Hueco Rock Ranch in 1991. They built the Ranch to be a communal space for climbers, much like the early days of his rented apartments and houses. The kitchen and common room were made to be the center of the house. Everything was built around housing a community of climbers. 

"We soon understood that what most affected the quality of each day was not the climbs we chose but the people we chose to climb with. This led to a Utopian experiment of building a home a mile from the park to house a carefully chosen core of great people, many of whom also happened to be great climbers," reflects Todd Skinner in Hueco Tanks: The Essential Guide to America's Bouldering Mecca.

PC: Dawn Kish

In 2000, Rob Rice took over the Ranch and added a guide service to the property. After more than a decade of ownership and management, Rice relocated out of state. In May 2012, The Access Fund went under contract to purchase the Ranch and assigned the property to the American Alpine Club for long-term ownership and management.

 Skinner's vision of a home for climbers in Hueco would continue, but in a new form.

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How to Climb in Hueco: A Checklist

Feeling inspired to wrestle some sandstone pebbles in the Tanks? Here's some beta worth following–ensuring you are prepared for your trip. 

PC: Dawn Kish

• Plan your reservation. 

• The daily entrance fee into Hueco Tanks State Park is $7; the park is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. October through April. In the summer months, May to September, the park is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays.
  
  A note for check-in: The office closes a half hour before the park closes. Reservations are recommended but not required to enter the park. There is a visitor limit per day to minimize our impact on the park, caring for the fragile desert landscape and ancient pictographs and petroglyphs. 

• Reservations go fast during the weekend but stay relatively open during the weekdays. Your safest route is to book as far in advance as you can. If you forget to reserve a pass, you can show up at the park as it opens and try to get a walk-in pass or snag another climber’s no show slot.

• To make a reservation to climb in the self-guided area, call (512) 389-8911. North Mountain is in the self-guided area of the park. A 15-minute orientation video is required for visitors to watch if they are venturing into the self-guided area. Don't worry; once you've watched it, you are good until next year.

• A guide service is required to access the East Mountain, East Spur, and West Mountain. You can request a tour through the park by calling (915) 849-6684. Another option is going through one of the local guide services listed below:

  Blue Lizard Climbing & Yoga

  Sessions Climbing

  Wagon Wheel Co-Opt

• Pack a Skin Kit

•  Items to include but are not limited to are nail clippers, a roll of tape, a finger file, and nontoxic glue. "The bloody flapper is the official injury of Hueco Tanks," according to John Sherman.

PC: Hueco Tanks: The Essential Guide to America's Bouldering Mecca by John Sherman

• Mind the Heat & the Cacti

• Bring sunscreen. More sunscreen. Maybe even a hat. Even in the winter, the desert sun can be intense. The average temperature in January is 44 degrees Fahrenheit, with the first freeze in mid-November and the last freeze in late March. According to the Mountain Project page for Hueco Tanks, "After mid-April, it's hot as sin."  

• The plants here are no joke; most are out to maim you. See the provided excerpt from John Sheman's Hueco Guidebook. 

• Grocery stores

• The closest grocery store is The Montana Vista Market in Homestead Meadow South.

• If you're driving through El Paso to Hueco, you can stop there for grocery and gear stores.

• Brush Up on Your Outdoor Ethics

• As John Sherman said in his 1995 edition of Hueco Tanks Climbing and Bouldering, "Hueco Tanks is not an amusement park created for climbers." It's up to us to preserve and keep Hueco open to climbers. Leave No Trace includes not using social trails, brushing your tick marks, and never climbing on or near petroglyphs.

• Some bouldering areas have been closed due to their proximity to petroglyphs. Read more about how to identify petroglyphs and which rocks to respectfully steer clear of climbing—>in this article. James Lucas covers a new app that allows climbers and other recreationists to check rock formations for faint petroglyphs, and to learn about their significance and meaning!

PC:Dawn Kish

• Book Your Lodging and Meet New Climbers

• If you plan on climbing in Hueco Tanks, the Hueco Rock Ranch is the best place to stay. The Rock Ranch is a 4-mile drive to the Park and offers a range of accommodations from private rooms to campsites. Costs vary depending on lodging type and your AAC member status.

• The Ranch has three options for accommodations: A house with private or shared rooms, camping for two people to a site, and flat spots for "road-tripping machines." The barn is a communal cooking area with a lounge, games, and books. There are showers available for $1 for 4 minutes.

• Well-behaved dogs are allowed at the campground but not in the bunkhouse.

• Prices are as follows: Non Member / Member

  Private Bunk Room: $75 / $55

  Communal Bunk Room: $45 / $30

  Camping: $12 / $8 per person

• Make A Wifi Plan and other Hueco Rock Ranch Logistics

• If you are a work from home nomad and plan on answering emails or taking meetings, Wi-Fi is available for bunkhouse guests. The water is potable, but the Ranch relies on water delivery, so please bring your own drinking water!

• If you're just trying out bouldering or don't own a crash pad, they are available to rent for $10 per day.

• The Hueco Rock Ranch season is from November 13, 2026 - March 14, 2027.

• Have A Rainy Day Plan

• Hueco is a desert, but it does occasionally rain. Hueco Tanks State Park has recently instituted a new rule that prohibits climbing until 24 hours after a rain event. Learn more at the Park’s website.

PC: Dawn Kish

• Train Creatively

• Get prepared to utilize a lot of body tension and creative foot beta. Seek out those boulders in the gym or locally that teach you a thing or two about toe hooks, bicycles, and knee scums. 

• Dream Up a Tick-List, and Then Be Ready to Abandon It

• There are hundreds of boulders; keep your mind open and be willing to try anything. You never know which boulder will kick your butt.

• Bouldering at Hueco is PHYSICAL—plan for rest days.

• Bring books or games.

• Take advantage of interpretive programming in the park.

• Explore El Paso, just 40 minutes away.

• Borrow sleds from the Ranch and explore White Sands National Park, an hour and a half away.

• Visit the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Cultural Center Museum and learn about the extensive history and culture of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo tribe, who continue to revere Hueco Tanks as a sacred site for prayer and gatherings.

• If you can line these up with rainy days, you're golden.

Grab a bouldering pad and set off on a winter climbing adventure where the sun always shines and the accommodations are the best around. Reservations for the 2026-2027 season are open now!

PC: Dawn Kish

**This article is undergoing edits thanks to community feedback.

Dark Road

Image by Christian Kiefer

A Member Story by Christian Kiefer

Originally Published in Guidebook XIX.

My father enters the hospital after his third round of chemotherapy. Over the preceding months, he has suffered a sore throat and often been out of breath. The diagnosis is, at first, a crushed tonsil, the result of a previous round of chemo seven years before. Then came the revision: a return of lymphoma, a different variety than the one he had beaten, although this one is, they tell him, easier to treat. A good prognosis, considering; he feels calm and resolved. He beat it once; he knows what to expect; this will be much the same.

The first new round of chemo knocks him off his feet for a few weeks, but he recovers. The second results in a cough and shortness of breath serious enough to be of concern. Now, after the third round, the cough becomes persistent enough that he has trouble catching his breath and can't sleep. I am climbing in Red Rocks when my mom calls to tell me that I need to come home. It takes most of a day to get back to my parents' Northern California home, and when arrive, it is to find my father pale and drawn, exhausted, clearly out of breath, his sentences comprised of three or four words.

***

Over the next 25 days in the hospital, my father's condition improves and then worsens and then improves again and then finally cascades into an increasingly untenable situation. Air is black on a CT scan, and the image of his lungs from the previous year showed healthy black emptiness striated by white threads. The newest images show lungs the color of concrete: tissue without air.

“I just want three good days so I can talk to people,” he says. It does not yet occur to either of us that all the good days he might have had are already behind him.

I stay overnight every night, my sister and my mom take the day shifts. Some days, he wants visitors-anything to assuage the boredom-but the visits also exhaust him. On a day when neither my mom nor sister is available to sit with him, he bursts into tears when I arrive in the early evening. "That was too long," he says. "That was too long."

He goes from the ICU to the telemetry floor and then back to the ICU and back to telemetry and back to ICU again, where he stays. At no point do I really believe that he will not make it home. I assume that he will probably be on oxygen, at least until the chemo is over, and we talk about how I might rearrange his house so that he can get around better in a somewhat debilitated state.

"I think this is it," he says sometimes.

"But you're getting better," I tell him. "You don't see it because it's so slow, but you're better than you were when you first got here."

"I guess," he'd say in return.

"Shut the f*&k up," I'd tell him.

He would laugh. I would laugh. There would be laughter.

Illustration by Foster Denney

***

I give my dad the best of me, but when I’m not in the hospital, I feel the black wave of depression come washing once more over my heart. I was officially diagnosed with major depressive disorder at the age of 18 or 19, although it probably started well before that. There have been better days, of course, but over the past three or four years, the darkness has felt increasingly overwhelming.

Climbing has been the only thing I’ve found that helps at all, and in the days between hospital visits, I’ve found a mungy, moss-covered, dirty, fractured, undeveloped crag not far from my home. My current climbing obsession is dry-tooling, although I’m not particularly good at it. Using ice tools to climb bare, unfrozen rock is a strange obsession for someone who lives in Northern California, the topography of which offers few venues. Climbing takes all of me, body and mind, so that there is nothing left. I can hardly remember a climb when I’m done with it—it’s like I enter a fugue state, less flow and more annihilation—and dry-tooling puts me in that headspace from the moment my cramponed feet leave the dirt. Perhaps this is a strange reason to climb, but I’ve found nothing else that brings me to absolute zero, without which I often don’t think I’d survive at all.

There’s an arête at the center of the crag, perhaps 20 feet of vertical or near-vertical climbing after which it devolves into typical Sierra granite rambling. It’s probably something like 5.8 in climbing shoes, the holds solid if dirty, but with ice tools and crampons it feels skittery and tenuous. I bolt it between trips to the hospital and do solo top-rope laps for hours.

***

I think about taking my dad out to the new crag when he’s better. I think about him sitting in the shade, belaying or just watching as I scratch my way up and down the route. Sometimes it feels like that day might be possible. Things get better. But then things get worse. During the days, I venture to the crag and put three sets of top anchors in, and then drop a rope and run up and down possible routes with my tools. At night, I show Dad pictures on my phone. At some point—10 or 11p.m.—I pull the chair into a bed and fall asleep listening to the various machines beep and whir. The nurses come and go. He does not sleep well—how could he?—so his nights are mostly tedious, watching the clock and waiting for the day to begin. When the sun comes up, it’s always a relief.

“Why?” I ask him. “Day and night are pretty much the same here.”

“I know,” he says. “It’s weird, but I’m always waiting for the day.”

He is mostly terrified—terrified and bored, a combination that anyone who has spent much time in a hospital will recognize with abject horror. He felt betrayed by his upbringing as a Catholic, and when he split from that faith, it was total. For him, what lies beyond is only a bleak and all-encompassing emptiness.

And yet this: “I keep thinking how much I’ll miss everyone,” he tells me from his hospital bed, the high-flow cannula a constant hiss. “I know that’s stupid. I’m the one who’ll be gone.”

***

By day 25, my father has deteriorated to the point where he can only function if dosed regularly with Schedule II painkillers—morphine and Dilaudid—and a cocktail of benzodiazepines for his ever-increasing anxiety and air-hunger. When I arrive home early that morning, I tell my mom that I hope we can wean him off the benzos, as they make him so exhausted and distracted, and it is impossible to communicate with him.

It is that same day that my sister calls to tell me that Dad wants to be taken off everything. “He’s done,” she says. There isn’t even a sense of loss. Not yet. There is nothing but the physical motion of getting back in the car.

His family, my family, gather across the afternoon. At his request, he is dosed with morphine, and we drop the oxygen slowly. I hold his hand and talk to him for five hours until he is gone. Or I try to. At four hours and 30 minutes, I fall apart, screaming and crying, my snot dripping onto the hospital floor. I can’t help him. I can’t do anything. And there is my dad, his final, agonal breaths rasping, and then, finally, lifeless, pale. And all I can think is: That’s my dad. That’s my dad. A few weeks before, he had been helping me build a storage shed in the forest. Now he is gone. And what I thought then, what I still think, is this: How can there be a world that my dad is not in?

* * *

Illustration by Foster Denney

The day after my father’s death, I return to the crag, clip into the anchors, drop onto the rambling, fractured face, and begin bolting again. A few hours of granite dust, tears, sweat. Occasionally, I think of telling my dad about the new route only to be reminded that I’ll never get to tell him anything again.

I call the new route Mr. Subaru, in reference to my dad’s late-in-life used car business. The route runs up the side of a broken arête so that the climber must shuffle up and to the right over and over again, rising and turning across the face on thin edges, one’s body constantly tipping sideways into the fall line, ice tools scratching at bare granite. It is balancey, tenuous, and just difficult enough to demand attention. I cannot say that I feel any joy upon the first ascent, but it at least requires enough of me that I can’t think of anything else.

I have no partner at the crag. Everything I do here is alone. I bolt routes and climb them. I sit in the shade of the cedars. I weep.

* * *

My father returns home as a box of ashes in early July. The box is simple cardboard wrapped in plastic, although there’s a separate small baggie for me to scatter in Yosemite, the place he loved the best in all the world. I have plans to go up El Cap and scatter those ashes from the top after climbing it, but realistically, that will probably never happen.

My mom places the box on a small shelf in the closet of the bedroom, which is now only her own.

What is the point if, in the end, you are just a box of ashes in someone’s closet? Why struggle? Why do any of it at all?

* * *

I bolt three more routes. There is a wasp’s nest in one of the cracks under a prominent roof, although I cannot determine which crack actually holds their paper hexagons. The wasps are uniformly black and move lazily around me as I pull myself up the route, testing holds, looking for good crampon placements from which to clip, thumping possible bolt locations with my fist or the hammer. Then the impact drill. Then the bolt and the hammer. Then I wrench it down.

The rope I have been using was fairly new when I started; once 80m, it has been cut into 50m and 30m, rockfall having created a core shot. Even what remains is fuzzy in places, probably unsafe. I’m not sure that I care, although I have noticed that, when putting up my rope for the day, I’m not excited about falling from the top anchors. So do I want to live? Maybe my body does, the animal in me. Sometimes I holster the drill and just hang there in the harness midway up that fuzzy rope. Sometimes I cry there, up above the ground. Sometimes I just remain where I am for no reason I can determine. Maybe it’s just the act of being in a location difficult enough to get to that I feel a measure of safety. Sometimes I close my eyes. Sometimes I open them.

* * *

The most difficult route gives the entire crag its name: Grief Project. It’s the route with the wasps, beginning with a short slab with scratchy but positive placements, just enough to keep you moving and in balance. The trouble starts at a roof that is, coincidentally, about where the slab smooths out, and the placements disappear. One can lever in the back of the roof—difficult but possible—and then a pick can be slotted leftward into a crack formed by an exfoliating hunk of granite akin to a loaf of French bread. It’s a solid placement, but just at the edge of the lip of the roof, so that one is forced into a left-handed lock-off on that tool. It’s difficult—impossible for me—to get into a Figure 4 or 9 as my body ends up crammed up under the roof and I actually lose more height than I gain.

I think about the route at night when I’m lying in bed, in my parents’—in my mom’s—spare bedroom. Sometimes I feel like I can almost do the move. If I lock off and then reach far right and then shift my feet over to the bottom of the roof …

But instead, I’m stuck at the lip of the roof again. I scratch around, sweat running into my eyes, but find no purchase. The black wasps circle. One eventually stings me on the forehead as I struggle to release my two progress capture devices from the rope. This is the price of the ticket, it seems.

* * *

When one is in the depths, when the black dogs are roaming, you do not remember ever feeling different. You cannot. The overwhelming feeling of doom is your only reality, and it is infinite. Upon waking, it is with the grim understanding that I am now faced with the task of filling another seemingly endless collection of bleak hours before I can return to bed. I’ve told people it is akin to waking up each day with an invisible gun in your mouth.

The psychiatrist writes a Wellbutrin prescription to augment my current Prozac. My mom tells me I seem better. I don’t feel any difference except that now I’m waking up at 7a.m. and can’t get back to sleep, a problem in that it adds to the daylight hours I need to fill. So I do what I do: I pack up my car with my increasingly decrepit rope and the box of bolts and hangers, screws and washers, set everything on the junk-show that is the back of my car, and head back to the project.

A few times a day, teenagers, mostly boys, pass on the trail below me on the way to or from the swimming hole and cliff diving downriver.

“Whoa, bro, are you a climber? That’s so sick.”

“Did you see that movie about that guy who climbed that stuff?”

“Have you climbed El Cap?”

I’m kind, and I even answer their questions, but you can imagine what I’m thinking.

* * *

At some point, I put the Grief Project on the internet. I’m not done with the development yet, but it helps me keep track of things. Each route is named with significance, most related to my dad’s passing, but others in tribute to a friend’s deceased brothers. There are ten climbs now, each slowly being filled in with lead bolts; all ready for top-rope, at least.

I tend to head out to the crag in the late afternoon, avoiding the direct summer heat, bolting for an hour or two, and then heading home. Sometimes I think that the bolting is not really the point; the point is that I have to force myself to get out of the house and do something, and this is what I’ve chosen. It is lonely, but then again, so am I.

Illustration by Foster Denney

Then comes a day when, much to my surprise, I arrive at the crag to find a rope—not my rope—affixed to one of the anchors. I rap in to discover someone I don’t know top-rope soloing Mr. Subaru. When he reaches the ground, he introduces himself. He’s found the crag from my internet post and has driven from Sacramento. Now he’s effusive in his thanks for my commitment to dry-tooling and the work I’ve done in putting in the routes. When he talks about the climb, calling it by the name I have given it, the name that was in honor of my dad, I almost start crying. He rattles off the other climbs he’s already done here: Pop Goes, The Creezle, Take What You Need. They’re all names that hold deep meaning to me, and now they are in the world. “I did a variation of Discrete Mathematics,” he tells me. I ask him if it’s good, and he tells me it’s his favorite of the crag. So I bolted it as a route and put his name up on Mountain Project as the FA. Mathematics Direct (Variation), I call it.

I call my eldest son that night and tell him I met a guy climbing the routes I put up. “That’s f*&king awesome,” he says. “Those routes will be there forever.”

I guess that’s true.

* * *

I don’t know where this all leaves me. In depression, there is no great reckoning. With addiction, one can—at least theoretically—stop using and begin the path to recovery. But there is no recovery from depression, or at least I don’t know of one. I take my meds each morning, although there comes a day when it’s clear that the Wellbutrin is making things worse. I cry during a visit to my regular doctor, then I cry at the dentist’s. There isn’t any clear thought behind it; it’s just a terrible ache in my gut and a mangled moan interrupted by sobbing. I pull over on the freeway; I stop in parking lots. There’s no end to it. My head aches. I have a therapist and a psychiatrist, so I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, but I don’t know if any of it will amount to anything.

And yet I return again and again to the Grief Project. It’s been a private place for me, but now it’s public, a community resource. I know of five people who have visited the crag. Perhaps more will come. There’s an active dry-tooling community in Bozeman, the place where I first fully caught the dry-tooling bug, and sometimes I wonder if I could start something similar in Northern California. This has been a place of terrible grief but also a variety of solace, and sometimes I fantasize that we could hold a small dry-tooling festival here under the cedars, on the banks of the river. What a strange thought to have. Does this mean something is working?

I feel empty when the final bolt is tightened down, and I pull up the rope, coil it, and begin the short walk back to the car. It feels like something has ended out here in the shadows of the cedars. Not my grief, but this stage of working through it, of allowing my heart to change shape enough to begin to contain it. Or whatever the heart does. That night, I log into Mountain Project and add one final route, the sixteenth: up the mungy, broken corner that runs up the right side of the crag. I’d been looking at it for a long while, thinking it might need bolts, but I think I’ve put enough bolts in already, and it’s not really a climb that someone would much want to lead: a scramble up broken granite steps with plenty of easy rests, perhaps something a newcomer to dry-tooling might enjoy. I decide to keep it unbolted. Top-rope only. A blocky road disappearing into the ever-darkening sky.

As I type this, my dad’s 1970 El Camino SS gathers dust in the carport under the deck. He restored it from junk, lavishing it with care and attention. Even through the dust it shines, a blue that is almost black.

I call the route El Camino Obscuro. The dark road.

I wish you were here to see it all, Dad. God, how I wish you were here.

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The Line—First Ascent of Duality of Man, America’s First 5.15d

Sean Bailey locked into a wild rose move on the Duality of Man headwall, with its porcelain-hard orange-and-white rock and microscopic handholds. Photo by Ben Neilson (@neilson.ben)

5.15d Comes to America

The Dry Canyon, an hour southeast of Tucson, Arizona, is a forbidding place. Tucked within the sere Whetstone Mountains in the Sonoran Desert, the Dry is comprised of a scarp of limestone running up a sunbaked hill, home to scree, cacti, rattlesnakes…and sometimes sport climbers. The one time I visited, we busted our rental car’s oil pan on the 4x4 road and I got heat exhaustion walking up the hill, albeit in late April, when the crag is well out of season.

With 100-plus mostly attainable sport routes in the 5.10–5.14 range, this remote desert crag hardly seems like a place where you might find America’s hardest sport climb. But it is. It’s here, in the Celebrity Cave at the top of the hill, that you’ll find Duality of Man, a 5.15d freed by Sean Bailey (@seanbailey) in March 2025, a process documented in the inaugural, 2026 American Climbing Journal. 

There are only five total proposed 5.15d’s (9c’s) in the world, beginning with Adam Ondra’s Silence at Flatanger, Norway, climbed in 2017. (The Céüse, France, route Bibliographie, which Alex Megos freed in 2020 and originally graded 9c, has since dropped to consensus 9b+.) The article below gets into the breakdown and unique difficulties with Duality. But perhaps the most notable thing with this 9c and the four others is that they all took huge campaigns by top climbers and they all remain unrepeated, showing just how much dedication—and often specialization—is needed for the world’s hardest sport climbs. 

—Matt Samet, Editor, American Climbing Journal

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A pulled-back view of Duality of Man. The route was bolted two-odd decades ago but didn’t go free until 2025. Photo by Ben Neilson (@neilson.ben)

How Sean Bailey dug deep to put up the States’—if not the world’s—hardest sport climb

At present, there are only five routes given 9c (5.15d) on Earth, all unrepeated: Silence, put up by Adam Ondra in 2017 in the Hanshelleren Cave, Flatanger, Norway; DNA, put up by Seb Bouin at La Ramirole, Verdon Gorge, France, in 2022; B.I.G., also in the Hanshelleren Cave, its first ascent livestreamed by Jakob Schubert in 2023; Duality of Man in the Celebrity Cave, Dry Canyon, Arizona, freed by Sean Bailey in March 2025; and Café Colombia at Margalef, Spain, completed by Jorge Díaz-Rullo in March 2026.

But here’s the thing about Duality, the first (and so far only) 5.15d on American soil: If you run its discrete sections through the online grade calculator Darth Grader—5.14c to a medium rest to V11/12 to another medium rest to V15—Darth spits out a new grade altogether: “9c+ [or 5.16a] soft.” (For comparison, the only other one of the world’s 9c’s with a crux this hard is Silence, where some have said the upside-down compression and crack boulder might even be V16, though it does come after a no-hands knee-bar.) So, it’s possible that Duality is the world’s first 5.16. However, given that it is way up a hill at the end of a gnarly 4x4 road and faces almost due south in the sere, remote Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona, it may be some time before the climb sees a repeat. Well, that plus the insane difficulty of the climbing.

Duality’s first half is the existing sport route Lee Majors, a 5.14c cave tackling tufas, pockets, pinches, and tiered roofs via improbable dynos and knee-bars. The line was bolted by CP Little in the Dry’s early days and freed by Nathaniel Coleman in autumn 2018. Above Lee Majors’s anchor is an extension that Coleman bolted after his FA, rapping in off upper anchors placed by Little. As Coleman tried the moves, a key hold broke on the 25°-overhanging headwall, rendering the crux harder. The full climb is outlandish, a massive roof on drippy, Spanish-style limestone to a white- and orange-streaked headwall, its rock porcelain smooth. 

 Sean Bailey on the headwall of Duality of Man, Dry Canyon, Arizona, a 5.15d—America’s first—that he freed in March 2025. The route links the 5.14c cave route Lee Majors (FFA: Nathaniel Coleman) into two extremely difficult boulder problems on the headwall, the final one—the crux—being a complex V15 on terrible holds. Photo by Ben Neilson (@neilson.ben)

It is also remarkable at an area that, with the nearby Farmhouse, has remnants of “90s ethics,” that there’s only one artificial hold, an enhanced gaston on a V11/12 boulder at the start. CP Little clearly saw that the climb could be done by someone, someday, and left it in a nearly 100 percent natural state—which may just be needed to cultivate climbs this hard. (Both of the Hanshelleren Cave routes, on featured gneiss, are natural, while DNA has, as is common on limestone, glue reinforcing at least one hold that broke.)

That someone was Sean Bailey, who spent three seasons on Duality—his final one, according to Climbing.com, being a concerted two-month push with lots of “almost sending”—often committing to evening sessions to avoid the heat and finally figuring out that he had his best burns when there was the biggest delta between the ambient temperature and the dewpoint.

Bailey is an almost deliberately low-profile phenom, having made a rare repeat of the Céüse 5.15c Bibliographie in 2021 and the only repeat, in November 2025, of Aidan Roberts’s mysterious crimp line Arrival of the Birds in Chironico, Switzerland, given 9A/V17 but sometimes speculated to be harder. On Bailey’s send go of Duality, only the second time he’d made it through the middle V11/12 and well into the V15, he told himself, “[All] right, this is finally the fucking moment. I can finally take control of the situation again, and I’m just going to make it happen.”

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New Cutting Edge Episode—The South Face of Kichatna Spire

The south face of Kichatna Spire in Alaska was one of the great unclimbed walls of North America. Until July. On their second attempt in two years, young American alpinists Eli Spitulnik and Michael Telstad climbed the 1,000-meter face with a blend of difficult aid and tricky mixed, placing no bolts. In a tight weather window, they blazed up and down the face in a little over three days, with only a four-hour bivy and some catnaps along the way, leading to a level of exhaustion that pushed them to the brink of delirium.
In this episode, host Jim Aikman interviews Eli and Michael about their adventure, explores the rich, colorful history of the Kichatna Mountains with legendary alpinist Conrad Anker and American Alpine Journal Editor Dougald MacDonald, and shares recorded tales from Al DeMaria and Peter Geiser, two members of the very first climbers to enter the Kichatnas, way back in 1965.

The Cutting Edge is sponsored by:

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Want More Bouldering and Sport Climbing? Get the American Climbing Journal

Want more thoughtful, deeply researched writing on the cutting edge of North American and international rock climbing in your mailbox? Then join the American Alpine Club at the Partner or higher level, and opt in to receive the inaugural, 224-page 2026 American Climbing Journal! With stories like Adam Ondra flashing Lexicon (E11), Katie Lamb sending The Dark Side (V16), Connor Herson’s crazy pogo on the first 5.15a trad line—ever—plus other features from or about Sasha DiGiulian, Noah Wheeler, Jonathan Siegrist, Sungsu Lee, Hamish McArthur, Mary Eden, Seb Berthe, Chris Deuto, and so many others, the 2026 ACJ offers the world’s best climbing stories about the world’s hardest and most interesting rock climbs. 

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Three Ways to Celebrate National Public Lands Day

Photo by Will McKay.

This Saturday, September 26, is National Public Lands Day, a chance to celebrate the crags, trails, powder stashes, and outdoor places that make your favorite adventures possible across America. Here are three ways to make the most of the holiday.

Get Outside

Make the most of our public lands. Go for a hike, bag a few pitches, or just find a place to slow down and enjoy being outside.

Sharing your weekend adventures? Tag @americanalpine on social media and use #NPLD.

Give Back

Public lands don't take care of themselves. National Public Lands Day is the nation's largest, single-day volunteer event for public lands. Each year, thousands of volunteers come together to help restore and improve the lands.

Getting involved is easy—head to Volunteer.gov and filter opportunities by city, state, or land management agency to find a project near you.

Speak Up

When federal agencies propose changes to how public lands are managed, they often provide opportunities for the public to review those proposals and submit comments before decisions are finalized.

Finding those opportunities hasn’t always been easy, but onX built a new Public Land Comment Hub that pulls every open federal public land comment period, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, onto one interactive map. They did the digging so you don't have to. It's a one-stop shop to find when and where your voice can actually make a difference on land management decisions that affect the places you care about.

The Prescription—Groundfall

It’s September, and the summer 2026 heat wave is, we hope, over. Now it’s time to get out and climb. As a reminder to both trad and sport climbers, the unthinkable can happen. In the case of this month’s Prescription, a quickdraw came unclipped from a bolt hanger.

Back in 2024, the first time we featured a quickdraw unclipping met with widespread disbelief and skepticism. Similar accidents have happened over the years—in this latest case, in November 2025, a climber clipped the first bolt on a tricky 5.7 and asked her belayer to take while she worked out the moves. She then led on past, slipped, fell, and the draw unclipped, sending her 15 feet to the ground. The climber suffered a torn ACL and MCL and sustained a concussion, but her helmet saved her from more serious injury. Fortunately, she has recovered and is climbing once more.

 In November 2025, the High Wire Crag in Clear Creek Canyon, Colorado, was the scene of a groundfall when a quickdraw unclipped from a bolt hanger. Photo by PeakDreamz.

Ground Fall | Quickdraw Unclipped During Fall

Clear Creek Canyon, High Wire Crag, Colorado

On November 14, 2025*, at 3:30 p.m., a female climber (Climber X, 23) sustained serious injuries after falling 15 feet to the ground. She had been leading Stone Cold Moderate (5.7) at the High Wire Crag in Clear Creek Canyon and had clipped the first bolt with an unextended alpine quickdraw. As she manteled past the bolt, she fell. The draw came unclipped from the bolt hanger and she fell to the ground. The fallen climber’s belayer was Adam Page (23). He wrote to ANAC:

“Another climber led the route and lowered. Climber X got ready to lead the climb. We stick-clipped the first bolt since it was high on the initial overhang. Some entries on Mountain Project describe this section as “bouldery,” “heady,” and harder than the crux of an adjacent 5.9. After tying in, X started up and was having trouble getting past the first bolt and onto the easier slab above the overhang. She hung on the bolt several times before figuring out the mantel moves past the bolt. As her waist passed the bolt, she slipped and fell. As she fell, the carabiner unclipped from the bolt and she fell 15 feet to the ground. She landed on her ankle and then hit her head on the ground. She had forgotten her helmet that day, and I luckily had given her mine to wear.

A friend who was observing called 911. I held X’s head stable until the paramedics arrived about 30 minutes later; it took 2.5 hours to get her into an ambulance. X suffered a concussion, an ankle injury, abrasions, and a torn ACL and MCL that later required knee surgery”

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Analysis

We looked at a photo that we took of her climbing before she fell, and the carabiner was clipped correctly into the bolt. As she was climbing, she moved straight up, with her waist only a few inches over the bolt. For this climb, one starts to the right, moves left, and then passes directly over the bolt for the mantel. After the mantel, you stand up on good footholds above that first bolt and then move left to clip the second. 

I think that as she manteled or as she fell, her harness or body contacted the unextended alpine draw, and that moved the hanger end carabiner in such a way as to open the gate and cause it to unclip. The bolt, carabiner, and sling appeared to be in good condition. 

The next day when I retrieved my gear and re-created the accident, I tested how easily the draw could unclip. It was pretty easy to cause it to unclip. The type of draw—alpine or dog bone—didn’t affect whether it would unclip or not. The bolt on Stone Cold Moderate was a glue-in style. When testing on a more common ASCA sheet-metal hanger, the draw would not unclip for me. 

On a route where a single protection point is critical, it’s worth clipping both ends with a locking carabiner. Also, in this accident, her helmet almost certainly prevented a far more serious head injury. Also, pre-clipping a high bolt is good practice.

(Source: Adam Page and the Editors.)

*This unpublished report describes an accident that occurred at the end of 2025. It is important enough to warrant inclusion in the next edition of ANAC.

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Video Analysis—Bold Unclipped During Fall

Jason Antin goes out to the accident site to explain what we *think* happened. The biggest takeaway is to orient the carabiner's gate AWAY from your direction of travel.

Pete Takeda @pete_takeda, Editor of Accidents in North American Climbing; IFMGA/AMGA Guide Jason Antin @jasonantin; Producers: Shane Johnson and Sierra McGivney @sierra_mcgivney; Videographer: Foster Denney @fosterdoodle_; Editor: Sierra McGivney @sierra_mcgivney; Location: Clear Creek Canyon, CO

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Get Outside Safely—Rescue Coverage

Whether you’re questing off on the twentieth pitch, or checking a landing zone for a boulder, having the AAC’s rescue benefit is a critical step for safety in climbing–ensuring you can find your flow a little more easily knowing we have your back in the case of a medical emergency.

Join the AAC today at the Partner level or higher, and back up your protection with up to $7,500 in rescue benefit and $5,000 in medical-expense coverage. 

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The Prescription is Supported By:

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American Alpine Club Launches New Mentorship Program in Grand Teton National Park

Image by Fredrik Marmsater.

The American Alpine Club's Mentorship Program—Alpine Track kicked off its first field module in Grand Teton National Park, bringing eight emerging alpine climbers together with coaches Sam Hennessey and Anne Gilbert Chase for eight days of climbing, technical training, and mentorship in the mountains surrounding Jackson, Wyoming.

Made possible through the support of Arc’teryx and Sterling, as well The Mountain Guides for this first module, the program is provided at no cost to participants, giving AAC members the opportunity to develop advanced alpine skills through hands-on instruction, mentorship, and field experience.

“Everyone is bringing a unique perspective to the table,” said Maia Crichlow, a member of the women’s team. “And getting to actualize dreams—really put words to what I want to do and see it reflected in other people around me—has been so special.”

Image by Fredrik Marmsater.

In this inaugural module, participants focused on building a foundation in multipitch climbing, including gear placement, anchor systems, and descent techniques. They also practiced rock rescue on single- and multipitch routes and learned how to plan for overnight climbing.

Alongside technical training, coaches Hennessey and Chase spent significant time building trust and camaraderie with mentees off the wall at the AAC’s Grand Teton Climbers’ Ranch. After all, an important element of alpine climbing is sharing a meal, reviewing a map, or swapping stories at camp.

“Mentorship is so much of the motivation behind why I climb. I find it really energizing,” said Suraj Kushwaha, a member of the men’s team.

With the first module complete, all eight mentees will return for the program’s second field module in December. The group will travel to Bozeman, Montana, and Cody, Wyoming, to put their developing skills into practice on some of the nation’s best ice climbing terrain.

The Alpine Track is designed as a yearlong progression, with four in-person field modules complemented by opportunities to learn from coaches. Through practical coaching, teamwork, and technical field programs, participants are developing the skills and experience needed to plan and execute technical climbs and trips in alpine environments.

The mentorship program is open to AAC members. Through the generous support of its sponsors, the AAC does not charge a fee for participation in the program, and is able to cover participant lodging during all field modules. Learn more about the AAC’s mentorship program and meet the full team of mentees here.

The AAC Mentorship Program is presented by Arc’teryx, supported by Sterling, and The Mountain Guides supported the Jackson module:

Linger

Photo by Katie Kelble.

A Story From the Mountaineering Fellowship Fund Grant by Katie Kelble

Originally Published in Guidebook XIX.

The dust clung to our ankles, its layer thickening with each step. Horses, porters, climbers, and the farmers of the Karayshin Valley had worn this trail before us, winding a path that led us deeper into the heart of the valley. In the distance, we could see the mountains grow, their landscapes becoming steeper and more sinister. My heart began to race, despite our meandering pace. I had only left the States once before, but had dreamed of a trip like this for as long as I could remember. I wanted, even needed, to come here; to try and prove that I was worthy of having such lofty climbing goals. To stand in front of something that didn't care how badly I wanted it, and find out if I had anything to offer in return.

We had started our morning with tea and breakfast at a guesthouse in Aktatyr Village, Kyrgyzstan. Our passports survived scrutiny as we crossed through the military zone, and then we were driving up a steep mountain pass with an eroding road carved into its side. Around noon, we strapped our bags to horses and began to trek into the valley. For hours we walked, following the vague trail. By the afternoon, the mountains in the background had grown from their small outlines to imposing peaks. We were first greeted by Odessa, 1,000 Years of Russian Christianity, and Kotina, three granite towers that shot out of the ground, dividing the Karayshin into its two hearts: the Ak-su and the Kara-su.

Golden hour came and went as we unloaded haulbags and duffels, set up tents, and organized our gear at basecamp. Illuminated by the moonlight, Slesova Peak loomed over us. Straight up its prow was our objective for the trip: The American Way, a 950-meter free route that had become the king line of the val-ley. The weight of expectations soaked deeper with every second I stared at the wall.

Katie Kelble and Colin Baker walking in the Karavshin Valley. Photo by AAC member John Ebers and AAC member Katie Kelble.

I was joined by my longtime climbing partner, John Ebers, and his childhood friend, Colin Baker. The plan had come together on a cold winter day earlier in the year. In a Google Doc filled with names of faraway places begging to be explored and climbs we yearned to try, Kyrgyzstan stood out. A friend of mine, Nik Berry, had raved about the fierce granite monoliths tucked away in the Kyrgyz mountains of the Pamir Alai. The first time I texted him about it, he told me it was "one of the best places" he's ever been. Given Nik's impressive climbing resume, I knew his praise had to be well placed. He particularly emphasized a route he established, The American Way, which he completed in 2019 in a team free ascent with Eric Bissell, David Allfrey, and Brent Barghahn. Since then, the route has seen a few ascents, the most famous being Emily Harrington's first individual free ascent, featured in an HBO series called Edge of the Earth.

Guarding the Karavshin Valley was a complex history of political violence and boundary wars. Borders drawn without regard for the people living within them had left lasting fault lines between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Since gaining independence in 1991, both countries have borne the scars of clashes over land, roads, and water access. Probably the most well-known expedition to the valley was in 2000, when a group of professional climbers was shot at while on a wall and held captive for days. While the political climate in the area had since quieted, unrest lingered. A few months after booking our trip, we were comforted by the official demarcation of a distinct border between the two countries and a steady decrease in violence in the southwestern parts of Kyrgyzstan, where our basecamp was located.

We made fast friends with the other climbers at basecamp, sharing inReach numbers in case of emergencies, sipping tea, finding the best spots for clean water, and attempting various camping cuisines. I was oddly comfortable with this group of people, whom I otherwise would never have met. I hadn't expected to find that kind of ease here, at the foot of something so large.

Photo by AAC member John Ebers.

Photo by AAC member Katie Kelble.

Our first day on the route was filled with self-doubt and shivers. A biting wind blew up the wall as I stared at the blank granite face. Most of the hard climbing was in the first four pitches, though above that were 16 more. Besides the crux pitch, seven of the pitches were rated 7at or harder, creating a fairly sustained route. The first working day left me with little hope. As I walked back to my tent after dinner that night, l peered up at Slesova, her moonlit face cold and unmoved. She had swallowed my confidence whole and given nothing back. Show me your secrets, I thought. Let me know you. But she only loomed there, ancient and indifferent, as if I were just another small thing that had come to the base of her and broken.

The second working day was a bit warmer. It was just John and me that day, as Colin had come down with a stomach bug that left him horizontal. The first pitch's grade didn't initially intimidate me, but the style was punish-ing. I grunted and slipped all over it, trying to trust credit card edges for feet while hunting for near-invisible handholds. As I reached the anchor, it was all I could do to steady my breath, to keep the tears from coming. If I couldn't do this "easy" pitch, how was I supposed to do the rest of the route? After a quick rest, I calmed my nerves and geared up for the crux pitch, a 45-meter 7ct that weaved its way through a sea of blank granite. From the base, the pitch looked impossible, its surface too sheer. But as I climbed, Slesova slowly revealed herself. I lingered at each rest, truly sinking into her presence, and she'd reward me by revealing a foot chip or a small hold to balance on. As I breathed and settled into each body position, the chaos I was feeling in my chest began to resolve. Sections that had looked completely blank simplified into precise foot moves that flowed into boulder problems.

Over tea that night, we agreed it was time for the send push. The first four pitches seemed within reach. However, our team was not whole; Colin was still sick, and although his condition had improved, he was in no shape for a multi-day big wall. We were torn between waiting for Colin to improve and making the most of our time there and going for the push without him. I had never been one to want a team to split up. For me, climbing is a conduit for friendship. We waited out a few days of bad weather while we prepared our bags. As the sun set the night before we set off, Colin insisted we go without him, that he would be okay and just needed more time to regain strength.

Early the next morning, John and I hiked in silence, both plugged in to our own music, but in reality, not listening at all. We were lost in an endless swirl of thoughts: Doubt and excitement traded places in my mind. The rock was still cool and shaded when we got there; Slesova's face only saw sun in the after-noon, often when clouds came with a threat of thunderstorms. Numb hands carefully brought us to the top of the first pitch, where we peered up at the crux. To maintain a balance between style and efficiency, John and I would both lead the crux pitch and alternate leads from there, ensuring each person freed all the pitches.

I finished tying my knot and took a steadying breath, pressing my forehead to the wall. All I can do is try. I launched into the crux, enveloping myself in its every move. I imagined the pitch as a marathon. While it was long, there were plenty of spots to rest, coupled with plenty of technical moves on small feet. I danced through the sequences, fighting to keep my heart rate down and my breathing slow. Eventually, I came face to face with the last sequence. The anchors were a mere five meters above me, taunting me. The moves guarding the chains shouldn't have been too difficult, but the only way I had found to do it was to swing and kick my leg to the opposing wall, leaving the security of the static climbing that had gotten me up here. I took a deep breath to soothe my nerves and launched, sheer grit keeping me on the wall. At the anchors, I was met with a twinge of satisfaction, but anxiety nearly suffocated me as I looked up. There was so much more ahead of us.

Katie focusing on her footwork while following a pitch on The American Way. AAC member John Ebers.

After John's success on the crux pitch as well, a quick sip of water and an exchange of gear had us moving again. We swung leads, going seamlessly from one pitch to the next. Moves that had felt impossible to execute the first time on the route went with ease now, and I found that suddenly the climb had dissolved into a methodical dance of pulling, pushing, jam-ming, and resting. As the sun neared the hori-zon, we finally reached the small ledge where we would spend the night. We cooked dinner as the sky turned pink and orange. The silence of the valley was interrupted by our laughs as we recounted silly mistakes and moments from our day. With some of the hardest pitches out of the way, my anxious soul felt more at ease, but I knew it was far too early to count it as a win. We still had one 7c downclimbing pitch, and a subconscious race had begun between our success and our fatigue.

The next morning was even colder than the first day. While the difficulty was far less than the day before, I had more than one bleeding fingertip and an aching body. A few pitches later, we found ourselves at a beautiful ledge carved into the wall like a small sanctuary. Before we could crawl into our sleeping bags, though, we had one more challenge. With rain threatening the next day, we needed to move as fast as pos-sible, so we reluctantly made our way to the downclimb pitch. John went first, pulling off an impressive onsight. He jugged back up to the belay, offering encouragement and tips on where to look for the feet. On my first and second attempts, I was stumped at the same move, a long reach down to a foot that stretched me from my toes to the tips of my fingers. I tied in for my third go, determined that I would not let a single long move stand between me and completing this route. By some miracle, I pulled it off, and we rapped back to our ledge with the last of the light. We cooked dinner as the sunset bled out behind the peaks, Odessa and Kotina standing guard on the horizon, enclosing us in a globe of granite. For a moment, the mountain felt like ours.

Day three, we began early, racing to escape the impending rain that would surely drench Slesova. Did she delight in attempting to foil us, in throwing challenge after challenge our way? I needed to prove to her that we could do it; we could beat her timer. We moved fast, and at every anchor a wave of relief came over me that we were one pitch closer to our goal. Around 2 p.m., we finally crested the summit. A sheath of clouds was collecting around the summits across from us, a reminder that we had not made it yet; it was still far too early for a celebration.

One benefit of having climbed with someone since age 14 is that you begin to move as one, with little need for words. In about two hours, we made it from the summit to the base, rapping Slesova's 950-meter face with ease. Rain fell as we finished our raps; a quiet benediction from the mountain. We shoved ropes and gear in bags and got ready to navigate the scree down to camp. Before we left, I paused and looked up, pressing my palm against the granite. Thank you for this experience, for allowing us safe passage. She had watched climbers come and go for decades, and she had watched me, too, with the same cold patience.

We got back just as light gave way to night-fall. We devoured some bread bought from Kamal, the shepherd in the valley, drenching it in Nutella and honey. The momentum from the day carried us, masking the exhaustion exuding from our bones. A short walk across the basecamp brought us to a warm kitchen tent, a cup of Kyrgyz vodka in my hands. Our basecamp friends had certainly become more of a family. We played cards, sang, and told our tale before crawling into sleeping bags, finally safe on the ground. Maybe it wasn't so lofty to have dreams of climbs like The American Way.

The last half of the trip was a fever dream, as l chased sun and climbed easier terrain, buzzing with the glow from our accomplishment. The hike out was like being held in the arms of nostalgia. Maybe a lifetime ago I had walked these trails, but maybe it was yesterday.

After a few days wandering around Osh and one night in Bishkek, we were boarding the flight home. I watched the city shrink as our plane ascended into the clouds, my heart filled with gratitude for this land and its people. I wondered if I would go back, if I would ever again be in sheer wonder staring up at the granite giants of the Ak-su Valley. I wondered whether I would ever have another moonlight conversation with Slesova. It was like closing a book, content in the knowledge that you might get a sequel or that the rest might remain simply a dream in your mind's eye.

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Support the Places That Support Climbers

The American Alpine Club is proud to announce its participation in the 2026 Old Bill’s Fun Run, where they are raising funds to support the famous Grand Teton Climbers’ Ranch with a generous match from the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole. 

The Club is also inviting climbers to support its other four facilities, including New River Gorge Campground, Samuel F. Pryor III Shawangunk Campground, Rumney Rattlesnake Campground, and Hueco Rock Ranch, to prepare for an offseason of improvements across all sites.

The AAC's five lodging facilities provide affordable places to stay, build community, and create lifelong memories next to some of the country’s best crags. Each facility is open to the public, and accommodations range from communal tent campgrounds, to bunked cabins, to private rooms in air-conditioned homes. These spaces are designed for climbers, by climbers, and give guests a camping experience rooted in shared interests, steps away from projects worth returning to day after day, and year after year.

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“A great place to rest your head and your body before and after any adventure inside Grand Teton National Park. Awesome atmosphere and amazing way to meet other super adventurous people.”

–Westley S., Grand Teton Climbers’ Ranch Guest

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Stories like these are common across the Club’s lodging facilities, with each space building its own legacy through the memories made—from sending a project, to winding down by the campfire at the end of the day. The continuation of these special moments and stories relies on generous support. Gifts to AAC campgrounds fund essential repairs and improvements so that each site can continue to provide a welcoming, affordable home base—and awesome atmosphere—for climbers now and for generations to come.

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The Line—The Canadian Rockies Choss Gobbler

The line of No Fiesta, No Siesta (1,200m, TD- 5.8) on the east ridge of Stutfield Peak East. Photo: Nick Baggaley Collection.

Exploring Canada’s Rockies Chossies

Nick Baggaley scrambling up to the east ridge of Stutfield Peak East during the first ascent of No Fiesta, No Siesta (1,200m, TD- 5.8). Photo by Greg Barrett.

Greg Barrett, a 38-year-old software developer and aspirant alpine guide from Canmore, Alberta, is among the most active climbers currently operating in the Canadian Rockies. Four reports in the upcoming 2026 AAJ cover first ascents on which Barrett was a key player. Barrett and partners keep finding new lines on familiar faces, as well as striking ridges and faces that have never been touched. Almost all of them require a tolerance for—even an appreciation of—the dreaded Canadian Rockies choss. Here, we’re sharing a report that arrived too late for the 2026 edition: Nick Baggaley’s story of the first ascent—with Greg Barrett—of a huge, previously unclimbed, and very chossy ridge on a Rockies 11,000er, where the modest grade of 5.8 only tells part of the story.

Stutfield Peak East, East Ridge, No Fiesta, No Siesta

In the late summer of 2025, after a ton of rain, there were a couple of short weather windows for bigger objectives in the high peaks of the Canadian Rockies. Greg Barrett and I seized the opportunity to get on a route I’d been eyeing for quite some time. The long east ridge of Stutfield Peak East (3,422m/11,227’, a.k.a. Stutfield Northeast) was, as far as I could tell, unclimbed. We didn’t know what to expect but figured that with my alpine guide training over the summer, and with Greg’s recent hot streak of ascents, we’d be able to get the route done in a push. 

Greg Barrett crawling along a ledge to reach the final tower before the summit of Stutfield Peak East. Photo by Nick Baggaley.

On September 2, we got a late start from Canmore, only to have my Ford Fiesta break down just after passing Banff, with several more hours of driving to go. This delay meant that we only shouldered our packs at the prime alpine-start time of 6:30 p.m. 

A three-hour approach up the Stutfield Creek drainage took us to a bivy on the silty bank of an alpine tarn below the ridge. Having forgotten my sleeping pad, I proceeded to snatch a couple of fitful hours of sleep as Greg happily snoozed away beside me. We got a leisurely start at 7 a.m., under an unexpected and unwelcome pall of wildfire smoke.

The ridge started easily enough, with scree and talus hiking turning into fourth- and low-fifth-class rock on the first step. We soloed up several hundred meters before roping up at the base of the second rock step, and then, after about 40 meters of 5.8 climbing, unroped once more.

The imposing towers looming out of the smoke above the next step on the ridge prompted us to search for an easier route, and we traversed several hundred meters south along a scree bench before soloing more fourth-class terrain to regain the ridge crest in the middle of the towers. Challenging route-finding eventually forced us back down on the south side, where we found a chimney that took us around the final tower. From here, we found a ledge across which we crawled to the base of the summit headwall.

Nick Baggaley scrambling to the base of the final tower on the east ridge of Stutfield Peak East. Photo by Greg Barrett.

More soloing of low- to mid-fifth-class rock, with increasing exposure and steadily terrible rock quality, took us along a rib on the left side of the headwall and up to the last rock band below the summit cornice. Here, we climbed two pitches of loose 5.8 to a rock bench, then climbed through easy snow to bypass the cornice, gain the glacier, and continue to the summit.

We named the route after my late car and my lack of sleeping pad: No Fiesta, No Siesta (1,200m, TD- 5.8). Overall, we would not recommend it to anyone except the most committed choss aficionados, as the poor to terrible rock quality makes protection difficult for most of the ridge. We chose to solo all but three pitches, but would probably recommend that other parties rope up for more.

—Nick Baggaley, Canada 

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Confessions of a Choss Gobbler

Yet another Greg Barrett new route is Confessions of a Choss Gobbler (440m, 5.11- A0), the first ascent of the northwest headwall of Castle Mountain, climbed with Gavin McNamara in July 2025. We asked Barrett what he loves about routes like this and for his words of wisdom on climbing Rockies choss.

Q. Climbers have been exploring the Rockies for more than 125 years. Why aren’t these mountains climbed out?

Greg Barrett leading the intimidating pitch-five crux of Iron Tears (465m, TD- 5.11-), above an old fixed anchor from a winter attempt. Photo by Gabs Clark.

Many of the accessible and obvious routes in the Rockies were plucked long ago. But if you stay curious, read between the lines, and look farther afield, many treasures remain. The required commitment and willingness to be scared keep new alpine rock lines available for those who seek them.

Rockies alpine choss is an acquired taste, like bitter black coffee or peaty scotch. Very few people like their first sip, and many people never learn to enjoy it at all. But for the few of us who grow addicted to it, we can’t live without it. I savor the puzzle and the challenge of methodically working through loose, steep, untouched terrain. Long, scary days are taxing in the moment, but they create memories that last a lifetime.

I sometimes yearn for an earlier era when obvious untouched lines abounded. But I don’t know that I would have had the boldness to push those lines with the gear and tactics of those times. Perhaps the present is perfect for me.

Q. What’s your favorite among the new routes you’ve done in the past few years?

Greg Barrett following the beautiful corner on pitch four (5.10+) of Iron Tears, at the Rimwall. Photo by Gabs Clark.

You’re asking me to pick a favorite child. But perhaps I can choose the one I find most recommendable, which is Iron Tears, on the Rimwall, which I climbed last August with Gabs Clark.

One of my favorite parts of that line was the spontaneity and relative commitment. We were planning to repeat an existing route, but during the approach, a striking corner alongside a rusty-red waterfall caught Gabs’s eye, and we decided to explore it instead. With no drill and only a vague plan, we journeyed upward, knowing retreat could be involved and expensive. In the end, we topped out a magical line and were back home before sunset.

Q. What are the secrets to climbing choss (more or less) safely?

First and foremost, stay within your physical ability. With few exceptions, I’m not out on the sharp end pumped out of my mind and facing a bad fall. If I’m not feeling solid on terrain, I’m downclimbing until I can either find a controlled version of the sequence or protect myself well enough that I’m comfortable taking the whip. The ability to maintain composure and control at 5.10 and 5.11 does more for you in the Rockies alpine than being able to power-scream through 5.13.

Mileage is a huge piece of this. On Yamnuska, the big limestone cliff near Canmore, we have a collection of routes from the first published guidebook called “The Kallen 34.” Some are now classics, some are testpieces, and some are obscure, runout choss. I completed the list last summer, and the climber I became by the last pitch of the 34 bears little resemblance to the climber who started that list. This sort of training pays dividends when you get properly “out there.”

It’s also important to fight for protection. Sometimes it’s easier to just keep climbing, but when things are serious, I’ll take the time to sneak in a knifeblade or clear choss out of a slot with my hammer and wiggle in a cam. It’s a numbers game, and you’re going to fall eventually. If you don’t place the gear, it definitely won’t hold.

I do think it’s important to be honest with yourself about the hazards. I’ve met climbers who seem to manage fear by telling themselves they’re infallible. You can get far with this approach, but, ultimately, hope isn’t a strategy. I think it’s healthier and safer to fully acknowledge the hazards you will face, manage them as best you can, and make an honest decision about whether the remaining risks outweigh the rewards.

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Cutting Edge Podcast: Le Bombé Bleu

On February 11, Erwan Legrand—son of the legendary French climber François Legrand—took down one of the longest-standing open sport projects in the world: Le Bombé Bleu (5.15b) at Buoux, France. Bolted in 1991 by Marc Le Menestrel, the 100-foot route features a notoriously difficult precision dyno on its blue-streaked bulge, followed by ferocious tugging on tiny pockets. Famously, Le Menestrel had opened the route as long as it was left in its natural state, a vision—35 years ago—of what climbing might someday become. Join host Jim Aikman as he talks with Legrand about his remarkable barefoot redpoint, as well as chats with UK icon Ben Moon—one of the route’s early suitors—and American Climbing Journal Editor Matt Samet.

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The Prescription—Fall from Ram's Horn Anchor

View of Mt. Diablo, Walnut Creek, CA. Photo provided by Wikimedia Commons.

It’s August, and in a few weeks our goals will probably shift out of the alpine as cooler temps bring relief to what has felt like a global heatwave. For many of us, milder conditions mean sport climbing. Whether revisiting a project or getting some pitches in, safety should always be at the forefront. 

Fall from Anchor | Rope Detached from Open Anchor

Bay Area, Mount Diablo State Park

Safe as it seems, sport climbing demands lowering—a technique that has replaced rappelling as the leading cause of roped climbing accidents. Lowering is almost always entirely equipment dependent. It also involves critical technical steps high above the ground, and almost every fall from the anchor is a ground fall. This month, we look at an accident featured in the 2025 ANAC in which a climber fell while cleaning a toprope anchor at Mt. Diablo, California. She reported the following: 

This ram’s horn anchor on a 30-foot 5.10 called Two for One in Mount Diablo State Park, California, was involved in a near-fatal accident on October 26, 2024. Photo provided by Sean Burke/Kim Harris.

“I was toproping a 5.10a called Two for One (left variation). I reached the anchor to clean the quickdraws. I secured myself with a PAS. I hadn’t seen this type of hardware before, and it was a type that wasn’t fully enclosed—as in the case of a mussy hook. The adjoining link wasn't big enough for me to thread the rope through, so I put my rope across the hardware, stood up to unclip my PAS, sat on the rope, and fell. I have no memory of the fall. I blacked out and woke up in a hospital operating room. 

”I broke my left ulna, two ribs on my right ribcage, part of a vertebra, my sacrum, and the ball joint on top of the femur. My helmet broke, and there was a small gash on the left side of my head. I also hit my left butt cheek, because the nerve endings have no feeling in that area. I had one surgery to cut off part of the fractured vertebra and to drain a hematoma. I was hospitalized for four days.”

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Analysis

My climbing friends and I determined that it was a ram’s horn that I encountered at the anchor. I hadn’t wiggled the rope underneath the (curled) part of the horns that would’ve prevented the rope from slipping out. Either that or, when I unclipped my PAS, the rope came out. I fell 30 feet and rolled a further 10+ feet downhill, along with the rope. It happened quickly, and K (my friend) didn’t see what happened because when I was at the anchor, my body blocked her view. K ran to get cell reception and called 911. Apparently, I was able to answer questions, but today I have no recollection of what I said. (Source: Jenna Chan, Bay Area Climbers Coalition, and the Editors.)

Editor’s note: The ram’s horn is ultimately an open system fixture. While there’s an advantage in having fewer necessary steps to lowering (including untying and retying), ram’s horns suffer from the possibility of unthreading. Two fatalities occurred in Austria—Peilstein (2022) and Martinswand (ca. 2020)—in which the climber’s rope became detached from ram’s horns while rappelling. Confusion can exist on how to use any unfamiliar fixed hardware. This accident illustrates the peril when the anchor hardware’s design attempts to balance convenience and safety. That said, no anchor is foolproof, and no design can negate human error.

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Video—Ram’s Horn Accident Analysis

Here’s what we THINK happened in this 2024 accident in Mount Diablo State Park:

A climber was cleaning an anchor that incorporated a set of ram’s horns, something she’d never seen before. Carabiners might have been blocking the fixture because, in her recollection, the links weren’t big enough to thread her rope through. She put the rope ACROSS the hardware, stood up, unclipped her PAS, sat on the rope, and fell.

Lowering hardware is either closed (rings, quicklinks, chains) or open (ram’s horns, mussy hooks, and—if they haven’t been updated—unwelded cold shuts from the 1990s). Ram’s horns are cheap, easy to install, and fast to use—thread the rope through, no need to untie and retie, and then lower. But as enclosed as they look, ram’s horns are open anchors. In rare cases—standing above the anchor or threading the rope incorrectly—the rope can come out of the ram’s horns.

Video—Using a Ram’s Horn

Most climbing involves lowering, so much so that lowering has replaced rappelling as the probable leading cause of roped climbing accidents. 

This month, we cover an accident in which a climber was cleaning a ram’s horn anchor and threaded the rope incorrectly, which unfortunately led to a ground fall. Fortunately, the climber survived the fall. 

It may seem simple, but when using a ram’s horn anchor, thread the rope through EVERY available horn. Always weight your system before lowering, and when using open anchors, be a pro and keep it low. 

Video Credits: Pete Takeda @pete_takeda, Editor of Accidents in North American Climbing; IFMGA/AMGA Guide Jason Antin @jasonantin; Producers: Shane Johnson and Sierra McGivney @sierra_mcgivney; Videographer: Foster Denney @fosterdoodle_; Editor: Sierra McGivney @sierra_mcgivney

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Get Outside Safely—Rescue Coverage

Whether you’re questing off on the twentieth pitch, or checking a landing zone for a boulder, having the AAC’s rescue benefit is a critical step for safety in climbing–ensuring you can find your flow a little more easily knowing we have your back in the case of a medical emergency.

Join the AAC today at the Partner level or higher, and back up your protection with up to $7,500 in rescue benefit and $5,000 in medical-expense coverage. 

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New Ways of Thinking Through Climbing Accidents

This year, the AAC’s Accidents Editor Pete Takeda received a 30% increase in climbing related accident reports. In this, our annual Climbing Accident Trends episode, we look at the patterns of climbing accidents that happened in 2025, and discuss what these patterns reveal, and what all climbers can learn from them.

From the human factors that influence accidents across disciplines—and the emerging prevalence of top-rope soloing accidents; the under-appreciated danger of getting your knee stuck in an inversion offwidth; the hidden dangers of a stick clip—to the continued high incidence of lowering accidents, we dive into some of the biggest trends and most poignant examples of accidents to learn from in this year's book, Accidents in North American Climbing 2026.

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Episode Resources

Explore Accidents in North American Climbing

Become a Member and Get the Book!

Read More Wisdom From Pete Takeda

How to Use Your AAC Rescue Benefit

Last Year’s Accident Trends AAC Pod Episode

Meet the 2026 American Alpine Club Awardees

The American Alpine Club is proud to announce the recipients of its 2026 awards, recognizing outstanding achievements in conservation, climbing and mountaineering, mountain literature, and dedication to the Club. Awardees will be recognized at the American Alpine Club's Annual Gala on October 24 in Golden, Colorado.

President's Gold Medal: Lynn Hill

Honorary Membership (posthumously): Daryl Miller

The Pinnacle Award: Jimmie Dunn

The Angelo Heilprin Citation: Scott Richards

David R. Brower Conservation Award: Alison Criscitiello

H. Adams Carter Literary Award: Geoff Powter

David A. Sowles Memorial Award: Black Canyon Rescue Team

Robert Hicks Bates Award: Dane Steadman

Keep reading to learn more about each awardee.

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President's Gold Medal: Lynn Hill

Image by Heinz Zak.

FOR EXTRAORDINARY ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN THE CLIMBING WORLD

Lynn Hill has spent more than 50 years climbing at the highest levels of the sport, expanding its culture and redefining its limits across the world. Most famously, Hill completed the first free ascent of The Nose in 1993, followed by an all-free ascent of The Nose in one day in 1994—a feat to this day only Hill and Tommy Caldwell have completed.

Throughout her career, Hill repeatedly redefined what was possible in climbing. In 1979 she became the first woman to climb a route rated 5.12d, and in 1991, she became the first woman to climb 5.14. In 1992, Hill became the first woman to onsight 5.13b, and by 1995, she made two first free ascents of 5.12 walls in Kyrgyzstan. In 1999, Hill led an all-women's team to the first ascent of Bravo Les Filles (5.12c/AO or 5.13d) in Madagascar.

In Nina Williams' final year as Board President, she will award Hill the President's Gold Medal, an honor given only seven times since the AAC's founding, recognizing Hill's contributions to climbing.

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Honorary Membership: Daryl Miller (posthumously)

Daryl Miller. Image courtesy of Charlie Sassara.

FOR LASTING AND SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON CLIMBING

Honorary Membership is one of the highest awards the AAC offers. As remembered by longtime friend and fellow alpinist Charlie Sassara, the AAC posthumously recognizes Daryl Miller for his lifetime commitment and passion for adventure, outdoor education, mountain rescue, and climbing in all its forms.

“Daryl was deeply committed to the ethos: ‘Go, but bring back a story.’ Along his journey Daryl touched the hearts of climbers, adventurers, and vagabonds across generations with his keen interest in their plans and adventures.

Daryl became a United States Marine in 1961, served during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and completed two tours in Vietnam. He left the military in 1972 and moved to Montana, working in ranching and as a bullfighter—the guy who steps between an angry bull and a downed cowboy.

In 1991 Daryl joined the National Park Service at Denali National Park as a mountaineering ranger. He eventually led the South District office and oversaw the entire mountain program, but what set him apart was his compassion. Though Daryl often said that “your emergency may not be my emergency,” his actions told a different story. When grieving families arrived at Denali searching for answers about a lost loved one, he stayed with them through it, often at considerable cost to himself.

Daryl was also key to the integration of the NPS Mountaineering Ranger Program with the U.S. Air Force 210th Rescue Squadron (PJs) and was later recognized with the International Alpine Solidarity Award by the guides of Pinzolo, Italy. Daryl’s ‘rescue highlight reel’ includes the rescue of Malcolm Daly from the South Face of Thunder Mountain and the 210th Rescue Squadron’s long line rescue of Jack Tackle from the North Face of Mt. Augusta in 2002.

Fundamentally, Daryl believed that a life well lived should be packed with powerful experiences—the type of experiences that require taking risks that challenge and change you as a person. What really set Daryl apart was his enthusiasm for ‘your’ adventure. Those who stepped into his circle will remember a man who inspired, encouraged, and challenged the people around him, and who very often changed the course of their lives.”

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Pinnacle Award: Jimmie Dunn

Jimmie Dunn on Zonked Out. Image by Albert Dow.

FOR OUTSTANDING MOUNTAINEERING AND CLIMBING ACHIEVEMENTS

Jimmie Dunn’s nearly sixty-year career includes impressive ascents that have paved the way for climbers across the world. In 1972, Dunn completed the first ascent of Cosmos on El Capitan—the first new route on the wall completed solo. In 1976, Dunn and Earl Wiggins made the first free ascent of The Cruise in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison after a six-hour effort. Other significant climbs include the third ascent of Standing Rock, the first ascent of Castleton Tower's west face, and the fifth ascent of North Six Shooter, all during a one-week trip in 1971 with Billy Westbay and Stuart Green.

Dunn recounts his extensive climbing career, anchored by vivid memories of fellow mountaineers and adventure, “I remember Bob Palais, as a young climber, bringing me homemade brownies from Boston to North Conway, New Hampshire, every weekend all summer in the early 1970s. In 1976, leading Black Magic barefoot on Cathedral Ledge, with Ajax Greene and Ed Webster following barefoot—we were inspired by 'Hot' Henry Barber's tales of climbing in Dresden, Germany. In 1978, I clearly remember Albert Dow yelling up to me for a photograph on Zonked Out, Woodchuck Ledge, a desperate crack I rated 5.10+++. I was wearing only one climbing shoe and had a bloody bandage around my throbbing butt cheek from a giant beaver’s bite. It’s now rated 5.12b.”

Today, Dunn spends his time supporting his son, CharlieJoe (CJ), in his climbing pursuits, working on his partner Hellen's wild environmental art projects, EARTHflows, at Sky Soul Studio, and putting together a book to celebrate the incredible climbs and climbers he has known, hoping to publish A Rope and Rack, the Shirt on Your Back: Life and Friends of Jimmie Dunn, Climber, within the next year. Dunn shares, “The climbs are cool, but what really matters is the people you meet along the way.”

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Angelo Heilprin Citation: Scott Richards

Scott Richards taking on the Power of Four skimo race with his daughter. Image by Scott Richards.

FOR EXEMPLARY SERVICE TO THE CLUB 

The Angelo Heilprin Citation honors AAC members for their long-term dedication to the Club, expressing their passion for climbing, community, and giving back through everyday involvement. Scott Richards is this year’s awardee, honored for his work in maintaining and strengthening the AAC.

Richards grew up in Evergreen, Colorado, and studied at Fort Lewis College before completing graduate work at Colorado State University and a professional certificate at the CU Leeds School of Business. In his twenties, he worked as a mountain guide and outdoor educator around the world, later teaching geography, art, and reading at a Colorado public middle school and then serving as a teacher and principal at the American International School in Gabon, Central Africa. He and his wife returned to the United States when she was pregnant with their second child, and Richards began a career as a financial advisor at Northwestern Mutual. 

Richards has been an AAC member for 23 years and serves on both the AAC Development Committee and the Host Committee for the Annual Gala, drawing on his dual background as a financial advisor and former NOLS instructor. He also sits on the board of Locally Haiti, working to improve health, education, and agriculture in the country. Richards’ reach extends into international climbing and ski mountaineering circles; in April, he and two teammates from Louisville completed the 2026 edition of Switzerland's Patrouille des Glaciers ski mountaineering race in 16 hours. When he's not serving the Club, Richards can be found skiing, running ultras, or bird watching.

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David R. Brower Conservation Award: Alison Criscitiello

A melt layer in a section of ice core drilled from Snow Dome, Columbia Icefield, BC. Image by Rebecca Haspel.

FOR LEADERSHIP AND COMMITMENT TO CONSERVATION AND THE PRESERVATION OF MOUNTAIN REGIONS WORLDWIDE

Dr. Alison Criscitiello is a world-renowned ice core scientist and high-altitude mountaineer who explores the history of climate and environmental pollutants in polar and high-alpine regions using ice core chemistry. Criscitiello’s work has taken her to ice caps around the world including Antarctica, Greenland, and the Canadian high Arctic, as well as the summit of Canada’s highest peak, Mt. Logan where she drilled an ice core in 2022. Alongside her scientific research, she is an exceptional storyteller whose work has appeared in film projects, television, and print—including her article “Contraindications,” which won a Banff Mountain Book Competition award in 2018. 

Her accolades are extensive: Criscitiello was elected to the Royal Canadian Geographic Society's College of Fellows, is a Fellow International with The Explorers Club, and was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee Medal for her significant contributions to Arctic climate research. She has also received three American Alpine Club climbing awards, the Alpine Club of Canada's John Lauchlan Award, and the Mugs Stump Award.

In conjunction with her research, Criscitiello is committed to making science more accessible to young women. As a co-founder of the Girls* on Ice Canada program, she hopes to merge science, art, and adventure to inspire leadership, curiosity, and confidence in the next generation of leaders. Her work has motivated a community of young women to pursue their interests in science and dive into their passions in the outdoors.

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H. Adams Carter Literary Award: Geoff Powter

Image by Geoff Powter.

FOR EXCELLENCE IN CLIMBING LITERATURE

Geoff Powter is a climber, writer, and editor, long based in the Canadian Rockies. He is a veteran of 13 Himalayan expeditions, and has been writing about climbing and other risk sports for decades. Geoff was the editor of the Canadian Alpine Journal for 13 years and was the host of the Voices of Adventure interview series at the Banff Mountain Book Festival for 27 years, showcasing his depth of storytelling across media. 

Geoff’s magazine writing has earned him nine National Magazine Awards, and his three books (Strange and Dangerous Dreams, Inner Ranges, and Survival is not Assured: The Life of Climber Jim Donini) have won two National Outdoor Book Awards, a Jury Prize and Best Climbing Book Award at the Banff Mountain Book Festival, and a shortlist for the Boardman-Tasker Award.

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David A. Sowles Memorial Award: Black Canyon Rescue Team

An Army Black Hawk helicopter lifts the severely injured Becca Steinbrecher out of the Black Canyon on September 11, 2023. Image by Vic Zeilman.

FOR UNSELFISH DEVOTION TO IMPERILED CLIMBERS

The David A. Sowles Memorial Award, powered by Rocky Talkie, recognizes the Black Canyon Rescue Team for their response to a September 2023 climbing accident in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, where a climber suffered a serious leader fall on Great White Wall and remained unconscious for nearly 11 hours before evacuation.

Twenty-eight rescue personnel took part in the response, most of them volunteers with the Black Canyon SAR team, alongside Black Canyon district and park rangers and Army National Guard personnel. The climber’s partner, Skyeler Congdon, secured her at the anchor before rappelling the route and running out to call for help. NPS ranger Philippe Wheelock led the climbing team that descended into the canyon and reached the climber, alongside SAR volunteer and former NPS climbing ranger Vic Zeilman. Ranger Tom Schaefer directed operations from the rim, while district rangers Ryan Rees and Ryan Thrush oversaw incident command. The Army National Guard's High-Altitude Aviation Training Site provided the helicopter that carried out the final evacuation.

Read the full incident account and analysis in the American Alpine Club’s publications.

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Robert Hicks Bates Award: Dane Steadman

Dane Steadman on the summit of a previously unclimbed 6,000m tower, later named Sangar Tower, in the Pakistani Karakoram, in 2025. Image by Blake Berghoff.

FOR OUTSTANDING ACCOMPLISHMENT BY A YOUNG CLIMBER

The 2026 Robert Hicks Bates Award, powered by La Sportiva, honors Dane Steadman. Steadman is a mountaineer in all senses of the word. At only 28 years old, he’s already made his mark with his 2024 first ascent of Tiger Lily Buttress on Yashkuk Sar I and countless other alpine pursuits which span from ascents in his own backyard like Barely Legal to expeditions in the Alaska Range, Karakoram, Himalaya, and Tian Shan.

Steadman describes his start in alpinism as “an inexplicable draw toward high, cold mountains,” which brought him from the heat of the Arizona desert to the cool landscape of Cody, Wyoming where he resides today as a Patagonia ambassador and climbing guide. Steadman spends his free time developing new rock and mixed climbing routes around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. 

Steadman is a recipient of the 2025 Piolet d’Or and the American Alpine Club’s 2026 Cutting Edge Grant which will fund his next expedition to Pakistan, where he will attempt the north buttress of Gharkun.

The Robert Hicks Bates Award is sponsored by:

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American Alpine Club award winners will be honored with bespoke, sustainable, custom-made awards by metal artist Lisa Issenberg. Lisa is the owner and founder of the Ridgway, Colorado studio, Kiitellä, named after a Finnish word meaning to "thank, applaud, or praise." Lisa has been providing custom awards for the American Alpine Club since 2013. Kiitellä's process includes a mix of both handcraft and industrial techniques. To learn more, visit kiitella.com

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Join us on October 24 in Golden, Colorado, as we celebrate these remarkable individuals and the many ways they have shaped climbing. The Annual Gala brings together climbers from across the country for an evening of recognition, connection, and community.

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The Line—First Female Ascent of Spirit Quest (5.14d), Squamish

Quinn Mason eyeing down the seventh draw early on in the hard climbing of Spirit Quest (5.14d), Paradise Wall, Squamish, British Columbia. Mason made the route’s first female ascent on October 9, 2025. Photo: Don Mason

Paradise Wall is one of the many gems at Squamish, British Columbia, a granite mega-destination known for its breadth: everything from classic moderates, to cutting-edge single-pitch trad like Drifter’s Escape (proposed 5.15a: FFA: Connor Herson, 2025) and Cobra Crack (5.14b; FFA: Sonnie Trotter, 2006), to endless bouldering, to technical sport. The wild traverse of Dreamcatcher (5.14d) on the Cacodemon Boulder, freed by Chris Sharma in 2005, might be Squamish’s most iconic hard sport climb. But the 5.14d face climb Spirit Quest (2021: FFA by Mike Foley) at Paradise Wall has garnered recent attention, too.

Spirit Quest offers a direct start to Tom Wright’s 2015 classic Spirit of the West (5.14a). “Interestingly. [Spirit of the West] was the first route I ever bolted. And in all of the 35 meters, only one small piece of rock broke off during cleaning. I was thinking, Man, putting up routes is a piece of cake!” says Wright. “It’s an immaculate piece of stone, and I think it’s important to point out that all the routes on that wall are fully natural, including Spirit Quest and Midnight Way—which I think is rare at that level.” (Midnight Way is a 5.15a that breaks left off Spirit Quest, put up by Connor Herson in 2024.)

In autumn 2025, Quinn Mason (@quinn.midori), who contributed both the story below as well as imagery of Hamish McArthur’s bouldering tear through Colorado in 2025 to the inaugural American Climbing Journal, made the route’s first female ascent. The redpoint process, though initially intimidating, ended up being meditative and joyful—a chance for Mason to connect with a beautiful climb in a serene setting amidst friends. May your summer (and fall) projects give you such meaning as well!

—Matt Samet, Editor, American Climbing Journal

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First Female Ascent of Spirit Quest (5.14d)

Dan Beland on the classic Spirit of the West (5.14a), Paradise Wall; Spirit Quest takes a direct start to this line, upping the difficulty significantly. Photo: Sonnie Trotter

Spirit Quest (9a/5.14d) snakes up the middle of the sheer, breathtaking Paradise Wall in Paradise Valley, Squamish, BC. The first routes went up on this crag in 2015, making it a relatively new addition to Squamish sport climbing. Paradise Wall is stacked with stellar, all-natural climbing, with about one route per grade from 8a+/5.13c to 9a+/5.15a.

Squamish local Tom Wright bolted Spirit Quest as a direct start to Spirit of the West, a classic 30-meter 5.14a he freed in autumn 2015. After Wright opened up Spirit Quest to the community, it saw its first ascent in 2021 by the talented Mike Foley. Until then, Dreamcatcher had been Squamish’s premier hard sport climb. While Dreamcatcher famously demands bouldery, gymnastic climbing, Spirit Quest stands in contrast, asking for head-to-toe tension and technique combined with powerful closed-hand crimping for 30–40 consecutive moves through its cruxy middle section, with an equal number or more of foot sequences.

I climbed Spirit Quest on October 9, 2025, making its first female ascent after 14 days of effort.

An overview of Paradise Wall, Paradise Valley, Squamish, B.C. Spirit Quest (5.14d) makes its way right up the middle of the wall. Photo: Sonnie Trotter

When I first walked up to Paradise Wall in summer 2023, I was blown away by its aura—in particular by Spirit Quest, the obvious king line following crisp, crystalline fractures up the slightly overhanging, monolithic panel. I waited awhile to try the climb—I didn’t know if I was ready and feared what my first attempt might unveil. What became more apparent during the process, however, is that if you perpetually wait to “feel” ready, that feeling might never come. It became a balance of embracing uncertainty and allowing for doubt while simultaneously fostering the deep belief that I could and would complete the route.     

I fell in love with Spirit Quest’s intricate, dancelike sequences, in which the hand and foot movements played against each other in perfect harmony. The route tempts you with the opportunity to crimp with all of your might, but with over 35 meters of climbing, it also insists you learn to relax into tenuous positions and find harmony with the rock. 

Tackling one of the most infamous moves on Paradise Wall—and the culprit of many a large fall. The move revolves around a left-hand sidepull undercling, settling into an uncomfortable box, and creeping across to a right-hand slimper you could seemingly spend all day readjusting on. Photo: Don Mason

There’s a move shortly after the seventh quickdraw that required me to lock a right-hand edge to my shoulder and pull over an unlikely-feeling left foot to reach a left-hand undercling at full extension. From there, walking my feet through and then bringing the undercling to my waist was one of the most challenging sequences—it not only required the most physicality but was also a barrier to reaching the more sustained climbing above, where I knew the real battle would begin. Two weeks prior to sending, I linked from the fifth quickdraw to the chains, climbing all the difficult sections. This encounter left me grappling with the contrived nature of climbing, and I lost patience and respect for the projecting process. In the following two weeks, I spent time sitting with my thoughts, eventually gaining the equilibrium needed to clip the chain. 

That day, wind moved through the trees of Paradise Valley, a welcome occurrence both for me and the community of climbers who’d spent many a summer morning here. Spirit Quest was my first true project, requiring at least 10 more days of effort than anything I’d done before. Those additional days represented many hours of rehearsing moves in my head, stressing over weather, trusting what was in my hands, and making peace with what wasn’t. I am grateful to have shared the experience of working the route and eventually sending it with so many familiar faces present.

—Quinn Mason

Ascent Info: First female ascent of Spirit Quest (35 meters, 5.14d), Paradise Wall, Squamish, British Columbia; Quinn Mason, October 9, 2025.

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Want More Bouldering and Sport Climbing? Get the American Climbing Journal

Want more thoughtful, deeply researched writing on the cutting edge of North American and international rock climbing in your mailbox? Then join the American Alpine Club at the Partner or higher level, and opt in to receive the inaugural, 224-page 2026 American Climbing Journal! With stories like Adam Ondra flashing Lexicon (E11), Katie Lamb sending The Dark Side (V16), Connor Herson’s crazy pogo on the first 5.15a trad line—ever—plus other features from or about Sasha DiGiulian, Noah Wheeler, Jonathan Siegrist, Sungsu Lee, Hamish McArthur, Mary Eden, Seb Berthe, Chris Deuto, and so many others, the 2026 ACJ offers the world’s best climbing stories about the world’s hardest and most interesting rock climbs. 

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New Cutting Edge Podcast: Le Bombé Bleu

On February 11, Erwan Legrand—son of the legendary French climber François Legrand—took down one of the longest-standing open sport projects in the world: Le Bombé Bleu (5.15b) at Buoux, France. Bolted in 1991 by Marc Le Menestrel, the 100-foot route features a notoriously difficult precision dyno on its blue-streaked bulge, followed by ferocious tugging on tiny pockets. Famously, Le Menestrel had opened the route as long as it was left in its natural state, a vision—35 years ago—of what climbing might someday become. Join host Jim Aikman as he talks with Legrand about his remarkable barefoot redpoint, as well as chats with UK icon Ben Moon—one of the route’s early suitors—and American Climbing Journal Editor Matt Samet.

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The Prescription—Fall From Anchor

It’s July, and we’re in high summer, with long days out in the vertical enjoying the season. Recently, we had a request via Instagram to visually demonstrate the mechanics behind a fatal lowering accident that took place in 2024 and was documented in the 2025 Accidents in North American Climbing.

Details came to us through a third-party report sent via our online report form. The correspondent did not want to be identified, but they provided the location, date, name of fallen climber, name of belayer, cause of accident, and other details. As they summarized: “Inexperienced climber (Claire Amiel) may have been cleaning an anchor which was beyond her skill level (and) tied in with a non-traditional knot [identified as an alpine butterfly], which became confusing when clipping mussy hooks.”

The published report and analysis appear below. The lessons here are to stick with simple tools and techniques, and practice skills—like cleaning and lowering—while still on the ground. If you’re the expert in the group, take extra-good care of your partner/s. They are looking to you for guidance and safety.

Jason Antin demonstrating one misstep from this month’s accident. See the full breakdown in July’s video analysis.

Fall From Anchor | Unfamiliar Knot

Queen Creek, The Pond

On January 30, Claire Amiel (34) fell while cleaning an anchor on a sport route at The Pond area in Queen Creek, Arizona. The fall resulted in her death.

According to a source who wishes to remain anonymous, Amiel was the less experienced of two climbers in her group. The anonymous source wrote ANAC: “Claire fell from the top of a route while cleaning the anchor. It's rumored she was tied into an alpine butterfly knot. After clipping the mussy hooks, she weighted the wrong side of the butterfly knot.”

The alpine butterfly is useful for glacier travel, but is not a standard rock-climbing knot. StromBer | Wikimedia

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Video Analysis

Pete Takeda and Jason Antin are back to explain an accident involving cleaning a top-rope anchor with mussy hooks. The catch? The climber was using an alpine butterfly tied to the middle of a full-length rope and clipped into the anchors with the wrong side of the rope. Tragically, the fall was fatal. This climber was less experienced than their partner and trusted that this was best practice in climbing. 

When it comes to cleaning anchors, keep it simple, check your systems, and practice a lot before taking it 100 feet off the ground

Video Credits: Pete Takeda, Editor of Accidents in North American Climbing; IFMGA/AMGA Guide Jason Antin; Producers: Shane Johnson and Sierra McGivney; Videographer: Foster Denney; Editor: Sierra McGivney; Location: Accessibility Crag, Clear Creek Canyon, CO

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Analysis

For most rock climbing, the choice of an alpine butterfly is unusual. John Godino at Alpinesavvy.com wrote ANAC, “The butterfly is generally not a standard beginner climbing knot. It is almost always used for glacier travel to tie in the middle climber to the middle of a rope. Rock climbers almost always tie into the end of the rope, especially when top-roping in a sport area.”

Had Amiel been using a mid-rope alpine butterfly knot, it would have created two lengths of slack rope extending from both ends of the knot. Though both sides would have appeared nearly identical, only one would have been belayed. Amiel may have top-roped up to the anchor, clipped the unbelayed strand into the mussy hooks, and then fallen to the ground. 

In general, climbers of limited experience or those transitioning from the gym to the outdoors are especially vulnerable when cleaning anchors. The use of unusual or unfamiliar knots, gear, or systems in critical situations like lowering/cleaning is very dangerous. 

Godino adds, “I would love to see ground-level anchor stations near beginner areas or on the approach trail. This would provide beginner climbers a place to practice clipping and cleaning, before they get on the rock.” (Sources: Anonymous, John Godino, and the Editors.)

Editor’s Note: We published this report in 2025. A good point has been made that any knot—like a figure 8 on a bight—might lead to the same result if used as a mid-rope tie-in/clip-in point. The butterfly knot is less a culprit than the location where it was tied.)

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All About Bolts: From Federal Policy, to a Day of Local Rebolting with Ryan Kuehn

This episode is all about bolts. From the nitty gritty of yanking a bad bolt out of the rock at your local sport crag, to the big-picture policies that govern the practice of bolting, rebolting and other fixed anchors on America’s federal public lands.

For the main part of this episode, we talk about the under-appreciated art of bolt replacement with Ryan Kuehn, one of the leads for the Anchor Replacement Program at the Boulder Climbing Community (BCC), an integral local climbing org for the Front Range of Colorado.

We also start the episode with insights from the AAC’s Director of Government Affairs, Byron Harvison, who shares an update on the proposed implementation guidance of the EXPLORE ACT and PARC Act—the historic laws that preserved fixed anchors as appropriate in Wilderness Areas. Bryon explains how the proposed implementation policy, just released and open to public comment, will impact how climbers and LCO’s will place and maintain bolts and other fixed anchors on federal public lands moving forward.

Dive in to get the full picture: from federal policy to a day of local rebolting.

[Correction: We would like to offer clarification on the statement at 15:29 which states that a MRA will be utilized by the BLM for routes which fail the casual use standard.  To be clear, the MRA is to be used when the BLM proposes to prohibit climbing in an area.  The proposed guidance states that a yet-to-be-determined process will be utilized to evaluate those routes that exceed the draft casual use standard.]

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Episode Resources:

Learn More About EXPLORE ACT Implementation Guidance

Take Action: Share Your Opinions with the NPS, USFS, BLM, and Fish & Wildlife Service

Learn More about the Boulder Climbing Community