In this Off Belay story from Alpinist 61, Jerry Auld imagines a close encounter with the gears of a massive mechanical system lurching under the surface of a glacier. The tale was inspired by some of his glacier travel in which he once fell into a crevasse and from a 2013 ski circumnavigation of Mt. Logan in Canada's Kluane National Park. He writes, "When you are in the palm of such a setting, it is hard to not feel the importance of keeping these environments working. I wanted to tell that story--to visualize a wounded Earth that is starting to stall, and how tiny and bewildered we become in that situation."

In this feature story from Alpinist 61, Eileen Guo recounts some of the history of mountaineering in Afghanistan over decades of political change and war. Today, amid the ongoing conflict and insecurity in the country, local and international alpinists still try to restore a mountain tourism economy, while groups of Afghan women search for a sense of independence on the rugged granite peaks.