With my work trip to Antarctica quickly approaching, Friday Nov. 6 became Konstantin’s and my goal to climb Dark Star (V 5.10c) on Temple Crag. More »

After bailing after only 1-pitch due to a late start and a heavy pack a month ago during a Whitney-Russell weekend, Lin and I decided to head back to the Direct East Face (IV-V 5.10+) of Mt. Whitney and try it again. More »

Friday Luke shows up at my house, “You ready? *sniff *sniff” he says.  “You sick?” I ask? “Yeah, been sick all week, thought about telling you this morning, but was scared you’d bail.” “Shizer”, I think ” I would have…” More »

Shay and I had been talking for a while about heading up to get the first free ascent (FFA) of Pipeline (5.10 A0) on Mt. Carillon.  It’s a 1000+’ route that he and Andre put up a year ago, and the “money pitch” involves liebacking, underclinging and smearing under an enormous roof that looks like a giant crashing wave.  In addition, we planned on adding some new pitches leading up to and after the Pipeline roof.  Mt. Carillon is just north of Lower Boy Scout Lake in the Whitney region, and is in a beautiful secluded valley away from the crowds.

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On Friday I emailed Nate asking if he wanted to climb at Tahquitz over the weekend and he replied with a “pass” as he was trying to put together a trip to the Sierra’s. A few hours later he emailed me again asking if I wanted to go attempt a new line up Mt. Langley. Shay had climbed on Langley the weekend before and attempted a ridge that dead-ended before reaching the summit – Nate thought he saw a ridge in the pictures Shay brought back that might connect to the top. He thought we’d try to do the route in a day but there was a good chance we’d face an unplanned bivy and a cold night on the rock at high altitude. More »

Last weekend Luke and I went up the South Fork of Tuttle Creek to check out the North face of Mt. Langley.  We were inspired to go back there after seeing the information posted by Doug Robinson on Supertopo and Alois on Summitpost about the amount of virgin rock that was available back there. More »

After not climbing anything significant for a while due to a certain Mongolia trip, Nate and I decided to jump right into the Sierra alpine season with an ascent of Michael Strassman’s If At First (V 5.10+) on the East face of Mt. Whitney. More »

Winter Ascent of the Complete North Ridge of Lone Pine Peak from the Owens Valley.

Climbed by Scott Nelson, Nathan Ricklin and Charles Ince, January 30th 2009. More »

On January 18th, 2009 Charles Ince and Albert Yu-Min Lin woke at 3:30 am to embark upon what may have been the first winter “ukulele” ascent of Mount Whitney’s East Face.  The Video below is the story of that climb… More »

Lin and I headed to Tuolumne over Sep 19-21.  On Friday we climbed OZ, a 3 pitch 5.10d.  The third pitch is supposedly the best 5.10 crack in TM, and I’d have to agree.  Afterwards we got totally hosed trying to TR “Galen’s Crack”, a 5.10c OW next to the road.  This thing is pretty brutal. More »

The Michael Strassman Memorial Route climbs the South Face of Lone Pine Peak following an impressive right leaning dike, dubbed the Super Dike. This prominent feature rips across the otherwise blank wall for nearly 500 feet, offering up some incredible climbing along the way. The first ascent was accomplished on September 30, 2008 by Scotty Nelson, Charles Ince and Nate Ricklin. More »

Scotty had promised that we would do an FA for our birthdays back in July. Unfortunately the weather had other plans for us that weekend (We were able to do the FFA of Kostas and Nate’s route Cleavage Dreamer, with a direct start). A promise is a promise, so the next chance we had, we were headed back up to the North Face of Mt. Russell to give it another go. Things went smoothly enough (I have yet to go on a Scotty vacation). We got up at 4am on Saturday and got to the base of Mt. Carillon where we set up camp and had a leisurely afternoon of bouldering, top-roping, among other things… More »

Teased by reports of big virgin granite up the Cleaver Valley, Lindsey, Shay Andre and I found ourselves parked at Whitney Portal late one August evening.  We immediately started hiking up, bivying on the sandy bench above LBSL.  I think this is a useful strategy for mitigating altitude sickness, and it also allows one to enjoy the hike in the coolth of the night. More »

The pipeline is perhaps the most imposing roof in the Eastern Sierras.  Flawless granite extending itself from the wall more than 30 feet.  Andre and I spotted this obvious feature while putting up Sweet Carillon.  This weekend we went up to explore it. More »

Last weekend, Kostas and I went to explore the West Face of Polemonium on the Palisades crest. After a lot of hiking from South Lake and a ton of talus scrambling, we managed to put up a pretty fun route that tops out on Polemonium Peak. More »

There I stood, perched on a small face hold hugging the arete trying to surmount the 5 foot roof that marked the middle of our 3rd pitch.  This was my first look at the wall above it and it looked blank.  Would I be able to downclimb? Was there an alternative path?   More »

Nate and I ventured up to the Whitney region last weekend. After gawking at the possibilities, we bagged two new routes: More »

We waited until the end of the weekend so that I could recover from a lingering cold and to avoid the 4th of July weekend crowds. It turns out that while I was getting better, Kostas was getting worse as he had mysteriously picked up my cold. So with occasional coughing fits we made the drive at a leisurely 60 MPH to Big Pine on Monday afternoon. More »

Scotty and I spotted The Cleaver while we were on the NERLPP, and after getting home and looking it up saw that it had only one route on the South face.  Sick!  We made loose plans to check it out, but Scotty suggested the idea to Kostas before taking off on a 3 week roadtrip. More »

Time to get psyched on summer, fuckers! The snow has melted and the time is here for Sierra alpine rock blitzes. Throw down all that heavy winter gear, get up onto that high altitude granite, and move your ass!

To get you all stoked here’s a quick report of Charles’s and my ascent last summer of Temple Crag’s Sun Ribbon Arete. We did the route in 18 hours, car-to-car, snagged the Tyrolean first try, and topped out around 5pm. More »

The Kearsarge Pass is but a small lull in the blocky granite ridge that runs between Mt. Gould and University peak. The scree and tallus of Mt. Gould’s southern slopes fall away from the east and west to reveal a stark and bony ridgeline which steadily slithers upwards towards University peak. It is the skeleton of the Sierra, growing with every seismic episode and aged by the very weather it creates. More »

Nate and I went up George Creek to try a new route on Shaw Spire.

The route ended up being chossy, cold and scary. We climbed 8 pitches before bailing 2 pitches from the top. That night there were 100mph winds over the crest. More »

As Nate and I drove from Indian Creek to Vegas, we talked about, guess what…climbing! (and religion, girls, mountains, but mostly climbing and mountains). I was telling Nate about my upcoming solo time in the Sierra, and his first suggestion More »

Mt. Tom, a behemoth amongst behemoths. It is one of the 3 iconic peaks that define the western skyline as seen from the areas around Bishop. The other 2 are Basin Mt. and Mt. Humphreys. More »

Mission: The Northeast Ridge of Lone Pine Peak in Winter. This route rises 6,900 feet from the valley floor. Over three miles of knife-edge ridgeline lead to the pyramidal summit of Lone Pine Peak. From the moment Scotty suggested we try it, this route appealed to me. It’s so simple. Start on the desert floor. Get on the ridge. Climb all the way to the top. More »

“Don’t worry about the anchor, I have a good stance” Kostas said reassuringly as Shay followed the crumbly crux face move at the top of the 2nd roped pitch, risking a 40 ft pendulum. More »

If I remember correctly, the idea was to basically climb the biggest route possible – in winter.

On January 18^th we took our first attempt without oxygen, only one stick of lip balm and a marginal weather window – the results were disastrous. More »

Scotty Nelson and I managed this route last winter. Scotty wrote a great trip report and the link is here More »

Alex and I had been talking about going backcountry skiing in the Sierra for the weekend, but a worsening forecast had us both talking about alternatives such as a surf trip to baja or Joshua Tree, or maybe even a nice latte (Alex’s favorite drink) and maybe a little political discussion. More »

“Hillary! Why must you leave me???”….Ok, so perhaps Hillary Clinton didn’t visit us on our winter ascent of Mt. Whitney last weekend. After all, she is probably busy campaigning in South Carolina or something, maybe it was just the effects of altitude and exhaustion wearing away at my consciousness. More »

I woke up at 630am, slightly angry because I had somehow snoozed my alarm at 5:45am and slept an extra 45 minutes. I have developed a special wakeup routine for nights spent in the back of my car in cold weather. More »

Many a time have I set off for a trip and been told my family and friends to “be safe.” This is usually followed by a silent chuckle to myself and the quick thought that most, and in fact, all the trips that I take are not “safe.” In truth, there is no such thing as safety, especially in the mountains. More »

With my feet scraping against the inside of the offwidth I was struggling to remain composed. “Concentrate on technique” I said to myself as the stinging in my parched throat intensified, punishing me for messing up the logistics of this big endeavor. Five feet of desperation later, I won the battle against the heavy pack conspiring with gravity to bring me down. More »

Friday, Sept. 7th, 2005: Driving in Jake’s car somewhere on the 15

After a week of spontaneous email chains filled with summitpost links, shit talking, and general ridiculousness, we (Jacob Felderman, Albert Lin, Toby Guillete, and myself) were finally on our way up to Lone Pine for a weekend climb of The Fishhook Arete. Toby was working’ the iPod and happened to throw on a great album by Ozomatli collaborating with Chali 2na (”Charlie Tuna”), and out of 2na’s fast flowing rhymes came the word “fishhook.” It was a sign (Sign #1). Chali 2na immediately became our mascot, and The Fishhook Arete would be known as the Charlie Tunafish Hook Arete. More »

As usual, monday came and I started to bother my roommate Nate about his plans for the following weekend. What should we climb? It was Labor Day Weekend so we had time for something larger than a typical weekend. More »

The Palisade Traverse: Thunderbolt Peak to Mt. Sill. Five fourteeners in a day. Scotty and Shay climbed the Palisade Traverse the weekend before… but didn’t run over and tag Sill. Since climbing is all about competition (and fashion) Paul and I had to one-up them and do the whole thing!

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We tried the route and bailed a couple of weeks before, due to the route not being “in condition” (or so we thought).   After Scotty and Charles’s epic 25 hour push on the FWA of the Winter Chimney the next week which featured pitches of ice, we came back for another go.
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Kostas and I climbed the East Arete of Mount Humphreys in July 2006. More »