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Posted October 11, 2019
Sarah Boon reports that David Guterson's new book Turn Around Time applies the mountaineering concept as "a metaphor for life." The book-length series of prose poems cover "the themes of youth, aging and compassion for the elderly," Boon writes. "It also investigates the boundaries between reality and myth, and common sense and imagination in the outdoors. Illustrations by Justin Gibbens enhance the whimsical nature of the book."
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Posted October 1, 2019
Read the essays from our Mountain Profile about Mt. Hubbard, Mt. Alverstone and Mt. Kennedy in the St. Elias Range of Alaska and Canada.
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Posted September 27, 2019
In this Mountain Profile essay from Alpinist 67, which is now available on newsstands and in our online store, Barry Blanchard relives a couple of new routes that he explored with Mark Wilford in 1998 on Mt. Alverstone in the St. Elias Range. He recalls one particular moment: "I lay raw and exhausted, shouldered to the mountain and anchored to it.... Our ledge was two feet at its widest and nine feet long. Strangely, I felt secure, as if I belonged there, as if I'd been in land like this at some time in the past."
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Posted September 26, 2019
In this Mountain Profile essay from Alpinist 67, which is now available on newsstands and in our online store, Jack Tackle writes about his time on the north face and north ridge of Mt. Kennedy, which culminated in a freezing epic with Jack Roberts in 1996 when they lost a crampon and spent nine days on the wall waiting out storms. "Years later, I still reflect upon the solace, joy and suffering we experienced together," Tackle writes.
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Posted September 25, 2019
In this Mountain Profile essay from Alpinist 67, which is now available on newsstands and in our online store, Andrea Rankin recounts the women's expedition to climb Mt. Saskatchewan in 1967, which was Canada's centennial year. Rankin writes: "The Alpine Club of Canada coordinated with local and federal governments to organize the country's largest-ever mountaineering endeavor, with more than 200 climbers attempting peaks in the Steele Glacier area, and 52 climbers attempting first ascents in the St. Elias Mountains." Rankin's team was one of four that was assigned to each of the thirteen unclimbed peaks in the Centennial Range.
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Posted September 24, 2019
In this Mountain Profile essay from Alpinist 67, which is now available on newsstands and in our online store, Anna Chiburis documents some of the Indigenous cultures and stories associated with the St. Elias Range, specifically within the area of Mt. Hubbard, Mt. Alverstone and Mt. Kennedy. "Areas such as Wrangell-St. Elias were not an empty wilderness devoid of civilization," she writes. "Indeed, the Tlingit had developed a culture that had layered their land with profound meaning."
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Posted September 20, 2019
In this feature from Alpinist 67, which is now available on newsstands and in our online store, Claire Giordano shares stories and paintings that depict her search for hope in an era of melting ice, endangered glaciers and climate crises. After recovering from a severe childhood illness, she grew up to become a mountaineer and an artist, using her climbs and her paints to explore the fragility of both wild landscapes and human life. With this collection of mountain watercolors, she searches for hope in an era of melting ice, endangered glaciers and climate crises. "We walk the line between shadow and light," she writes, "and we slowly move forward."
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Posted September 19, 2019
Alpinist Managing Editor Paula Wright interviewed Pasang Yangjee Sherpa for the Alpinist Podcast in 2017 and followed up with her again this month. Born in Kathmandu, Yangjee Sherpa is an anthropologist who specializes in the human dimensions of climate change in the Himalaya. She says that "mountaineers are really well equipped to be advocates for talking about climate change...because of the kind of intimate relationship mountaineers have with the natural landscape, with mountains, snow and glaciers.... So I would like mountaineers to speak more about it and share what they know with the public."
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Posted July 20, 2019
In this Namesake story from Alpinist 48 (2014), Katsutaka "Jumbo" Yokoyama—an original member of Japan's famous Giri-Giri Boys, who have become known for their bold and visionary ascents—writes about the first ascent of a route he named Izumi ("The Spring") on Mt. Mizugaki.
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Posted June 21, 2019
"A peak can exercise the same irresistible power as an abyss," Theophile Gautier wrote in 1868. Robert Macfarlane's new book Underland explores the landscapes below our feet where, as Sarah Boon writes in her review, "people appear to find something similar in caves to what they experience in the mountains—clarity of thought and vision."
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