climber

  • Vet-Ex-Featured-660

    Invisible Wounds

    Hours before sunup, we click on our headlamps and follow the blue-hued cones of light on the first steps of what will surely be a very long day. We’re embarking on a 20-mile traverse of the Mummy Range in Rocky Mountain National Park, over the course of which we’ll summit seven peaks over 13,000 feet. For the first half hour or so, our crew of eight military veterans doesn’t say a word—the only sounds are gravelly footfalls and varied degrees of labored breathing in the thin alpine air.

  • Cedar-Wright-Gravity-Ceiling-158

    Rock Therapy

    The rope arches in an unbroken loop from me to Lucho, 30 feet above. “At least there’s no rope drag,” I quip, trying to make light of his predicament. We are six pitches up the South Dragon’s Horn on Tioman Island, off the coast of Malaysia, living proof that climbing can go from fun to fubar in a microsecond.

  • S'more Energy (5.11c), Endless Wall, New River Gorge

    Red River Gorge vs. New River Gorge

    When the Red River Gorge and New River Gorge rivalry threatened to boil over, there was only one place to settle it: on the basketball court. - Huge spotlights suddenly lit up the small community basketball court in Lansing, West Virginia, near the rim of the New River Gorge. Lights, really? Who rigged those?

  • Herb Conn

    Herb Conn Dies at 91

    Climbing pioneer Herb Conn passed away in his home near Custer, South Dakota, on February 1, at the age of 91.

  • Pioneer, Legend Harvey T. Carter Dies

    Harvey Carter--climbing icon and legend--passed away Tuesday, March 13, at the age of 83. With a climbing career lasting more than 60 years, Carter pioneered and discovered many of the well-known climbing areas in the four-corners area, including the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, and is rumored to have made over 5,000 first ascents.

  • Alaskan Alpine Club Founder Dies

    Doug Buchanan was filled with hospitality, humor, wit, intelligence, incredible drive, insight, and honor. His last adventure was a fight with cancer.

  • Stephanie Forte’s Story

    Every few years, Stephanie Forte, 44, whips herself into top shape and climbs a flurry of hard 5.13s. A New Jersey girl with a sharp wit, a publicist's poise, and fierce athleticism on the rock, Forte has written for Climbing many times and has had her hands on all kinds of climbing-related events and causes.

  • The view from Gasherbrum II. Photo by Cory Richards

    2012 Golden Piton Awards

    On frozen Karakoram peaks, fierce alpine faces, and crags around the world, climbers killed it last year. Here, Climbing presents the 10th annual Golden Piton Awards for top performances in six disciplines: mountaineering, big wall, traditional climbing, crack climbing, sport climbing, and breakaway success.

  • Survivors - Enduring Desperate Situations

    Survivors – Enduring Desperate Situations

    We surveyed readers and more than a dozen climbing historians and writers in North America and Europe to collect 25 stories of stamina, ingenuity, and human will, some well-known, others not. Our hope is to remind readers to take care and prevent accidents--to"do nothing in haste, look well to each step," as Whymper famously said after the Matterhorn tragedy.

  • Staying Alive

    Staying Alive

    Survival tips from climbing rangers - Nobody expects to be loaded onto a litter and evacuated off his first big wall. Or stuck in a snow cave, out of food and fuel, hypothermic, and praying that a storm will quit and someone will find him. Yet it happens, every year, and not just to newbies. Climbers make mistakes, or get unlucky, and rescue rangers drop from the sky and save our asses.

  • Craig-DeMartino-660

    More Than Able: Craig DeMartino’s Story

    Craig DeMartino's heartbeat bounded and then stumbled beneath ranger and climber Erik Gabriel's fingers. DeMartino was losing blood. Broken ribs had ripped a hole in his right lung. With each breath, a deep gurgle choked from his torso. His neck was broken.

  • 10 Things You Didn't Know about Dynos

    10 Things You Didn’t Know about Dynos

    Call them what you will--"sloppy," "desperate," "intimidating," "amazing"--but dynamic moves are essential to our repertoire.