Alpinist

Whitney Clark is a professional climber who has established several alpine routes around the globe. She also spends a lot of time thinking about how to balance risk and ambition in the mountains. In this episode, Clark opens up about how she approaches decision making in the alpine—whether to bail or climb on—and how those moments ripple on into the future. In the second part of this episode, Clark reads her essay, "A Few Seconds," which first appeared in Issue 58 of Alpinist magazine.

In this episode, Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft shares a story about a winter attempt of Sisnaajini (Blanca Peak) with Len Necefer, the founder of Natives Outdoors, and pro skier Brody Leven. Along the way, the climbers learn more about the Indigenous history and stories surrounding the mountain. Chris Zabriskie’s music available courtesy of https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In 2003 Nick Bullock quit his steady job as an instructor in the Prison Service to climb and write full-time. His 2016 ascent of Nyainqentanglha Southeast (7046m) in Tibet with Paul Ramsden won the climbers a Piolet d’Or the following year. In this episode, Bullock discusses his path to climbing and the Alpinist article he wrote about the Nyainqentanglha climb, which won an award from the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in 2017.

An avid climber and the author of The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors, James Edward Mills has worked in the outdoor industry for decades. As team journalist, he chronicled the 2013 journey of Expedition Denali, a project conceived to put the first team of African Americans on the summit of the highest point of North America. In this episode, Mills talks with associate editor Paula Wright about the adventure gap and the relationship between mountaineering and the civil rights movement.

After he graduated from college in 1996, Jimmy Chin hit the road, planning to climb and ski for a year before heading to grad school. Twenty-two years later, he’s still adventuring in the mountains. In this episode, we discuss Chin’s life growing up in small-town Minnesota as the son of Chinese immigrants and his path to adventure photography. Plus: his take on filming Alex Honnold’s free solo of El Cap and skiing with his daughter.

Perhaps no other writer has explored Cold War and post-Soviet era mountaineering more than Bernadette McDonald has. In this episode, Bernadette McDonald discusses her award-winning book, Art of Freedom, a biography of Voytek Kurtyka, one of the most accomplished, and reclusive, alpinists of our time.

In 2002, Mayan Smith-Gobat was in a ski accident and broke her jaw and both feet. Within a few weeks, she turned her focus to climbing and began training while her feet were still in casts. Nine years later, she became the second woman ever to free climb the Salathé Wall on El Capitan. Today, she’s concentrating on Riders on the Storm, a 1,300-meter big wall on the icy east face of Torre Central in Chilean Patagonia, which still hasn’t had a free ascent.

Many climbers observe the voluntary climbing ban at Bear Lodge (Devils Tower) in Wyoming during the month of June as their way to show respect for local Native American cultures. In this episode, journalist Nick Mott discusses the voluntary closure with local climbers and Indigenous leaders, to learn more about their views on the history.

In the 1990s, after more than a decade of climbing in the Sierra Nevada, Jim Herrington embarked on a journey to photograph some of the most formidable mountaineers of the past generation. In this episode, rock-and-roll photographer Herrington discusses his recently released coffee-table book The Climbers and some of the stories from behind the scenes. Plus, a tribute to Fred Beckey. More at alpinist.com/podcast

Mountaineering and Climate Change

Death and Climbing, Part 2

By 1965, at age 22, David Roberts had witnessed three fatal accidents in the mountains. Over 50 years since, Roberts has explored in writing what makes climbing worth the risk. In this episode, Roberts discusses an article he wrote for Alpinist 56, in which he revisits “moments of doubt.”

In November 2016, while attempting the unclimbed Lunag Ri (6907m) with David Lama, Conrad Anker suffered a heart attack and had to descend from the climb to be evacuated by helicopter from advanced base camp. In this episode, Anker recalls the event and considers the effects on his career as an alpinist going forward. More at alpinist.com/podcast.

Why does story telling seem so essential to the climbing life? In this episode, we interview two climbers—Tommy Caldwell, whose recent book The Push traces his life from diapers to the Dawn Wall, and Bree Loewen, the author of Found: A Life in Mountain Rescue—on why their mountain travels ignite the desire to write. More at alpinist.com/podcast