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Can You Be a Climber Without Being a Mountaineer?

April 16th, 2009 | 10 Comments | Posted in Mountaineering - Alps, Rants&Raves, Rock Climbing

A friend and I were talking last night… He’s a great [tag-tec]alpinist[/tag-tec], having bagged several difficult routes in Europe and getting to 6600 meters on the shivering, cruel North Face of [tag-tec]Khan-Tengri[/tag-tec]. He went on a small climbing vacation to Croatia’s [tag-tec]Paklenica[/tag-tec] National Park – a paradise of bolted single- and multi-pitch rock routes.  With his girlfriend, a novice climber, they did a few routes where – after topping out, you could opt to hike back on steep, rocky trails to the foot of the wall instead of rapelling.

Great weather in late autumn and a ton of people [tag-tec]climbing[/tag-tec]. But what became apparent to them is the inadequacy of a bunch of sport climbers to… actually hike. It was a disgrace. More »

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First Ascent of Fisht Western Face in the Caucasus

April 9th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in Mountaineering - Alps, Rock Climbing

You’ve got to have respect for Russain mounaineers. In Europe and North-America, they get too little attention. I just read on the English pages of mountain.ru (great site, by the way, full of priceless information) that a team of five ascended the 560 m wall of Fisht’s Western Face straight on the fall line. The conditions were incredibly crappy for them, but the tough, Prussian-style schooling paid off: they were able to ascend despite the poor conditions – despite hardly even being able to reach BC in the snowy and ici days of the Caucasian February.

Check out the dispatches here and lament over what it must have been like to climb this baby in early March:

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