The Cutting Edge

Tiphaine Duperier and Boris Langenstein from France have made first ski descents in many parts of Asia. But until 2022, Tiphaine had never been to North America. In May, she flew to Alaska with Boris to pursue a crazy dream: a ski descent of the Cassin Ridge on Denali. The two quickly realized this wouldn’t be possible (at least this year), but an alternate vision soon appeared: a ski line down th...

Have you ever wondered how ordinary climbers manage to put together an expedition to the Himalaya? Our guests Ethan Berman and Maarten Van Haeren just made the first ascent of the northeast face of Khang Karpo (6,646 meters) in Nepal during their very first expedition to the mountains of Asia. In this episode, AAJ editor Dougald MacDonald interviews the pair about their beautiful new route, and th...

With only about a dozen ascents in nearly four decades, the Slovak Direct route on Denali's south face is one of North America's premier hard climbs. Sixteen years after the first ascent, Scott Backes, Steve House, and Mark Twight famously upped the ante by climbing the route in single-push style: bringing no tent or sleeping bags and climbing nearly continuously for 60 hours. Twenty-two years lat...

In mid-September, American Colin Haley, 38, added another impressive solo ascent to his long list of ground-breaking alpine climbs (both roped and unroped). During an impromptu late-winter trip to Patagonia, in a round-trip of around 21 hours, Haley climbed the Supercanaleta route on Cerro Chaltén (Fitz Roy), the first time this 1,600-meter climb has been soloed in winter. And by solo, we really m...

In July, German climber Fabian Buhl and Will Sim from the U.K. reached the summit of a 5,800-meter rock and ice tower in Pakistan. Their first ascent wasn't particularly big or difficult. What made the climb extraordinary was their approach: After a leisurely breakfast in Karimibad, the nearest big town, they flew paragliders to the glacier at the foot of the tower, gaining about 2,000 meters in e...

5.13 M7 WI6. These are the kinds of numbers that catch climbers’ attention, especially when you’re talking about climbing a 6,000-meter peak in Peru. But numbers don’t come close to capturing all the challenges of a route like the one done by our guests Vince Anderson and Josh Wharton in July. In this episode, the Colorado-based climbers explain why it took four trips to Peru to complete their all...

Pumari Chhish East, a nearly 7,000-meter peak in the Karakoram, had been the goal of at least six expeditions over the last 15 years. In late June, the French-American trio of Christophe Ogier, Jérôme Sullivan, and Victor Saucède finally pulled it off. In the rapidly warming Karakoram, an effective strategy was key. In this episode, AAJ editor Dougald MacDonald speaks with Ogier and Sullivan about...

In 1976, Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker from Great Britain climbed the west face of Changabang (6,880m) in India, the most technical climb at this altitude ever done at the time. In May of this year, 46 years later, the team of Dan Joll, Kim Ladiges, and Matt Scholes, from New Zealand and Australia, finally made the second ascent. In this episode, we first speak with eminent climbing historian and...

In late March, Clint Helander and Andres Marin climbed the direct east face of Golgotha in Alaska's Revelation Mountains. The new route, Shaft of the Abyss (4,000', VI AI5 R M5 A0 90°), had been the goal of four expeditions by the two men, starting in 2016, and was the culmination of Helander's remarkable career in the Revelations, where he has completed 12 expeditions and numerous first ascents....

On November 6, three Ukrainian climbers—Nikita Balabanov, Mikhail “Misha” Fomin, and Viacheslav "Slava" Polezhaiko—summited Annapurna III by the southeast ridge. This towering ridge line, following a knife-edge of loose snow and even looser rock to a 7,555-meter summit, had been a coveted goal of elite Himalayan climbers for 40 years. The three men spent 18 days on their extremely complex alpine-s...

Archil Badriashvili has completed a number of wild new routes in Nepal in recent years, and this fall, the 31-year-old from Georgia and regular partners Giorgi Tepnadze and Baqar Gelashvili mounted an impressive expedition to the Hindu Kush in far northwestern Pakistan. After warming up with a new route to a 6,800-meter peak, the trio made the first ascent of the highest unclimbed mountain in the...

This year, alpinist Chantel Astorga realized a long-held dream: a solo ascent of the classic Cassin Ridge on Denali, climbing 8,000 vertical feet from the bergschrund to the summit in 14 hours and 39 minutes. An avalanche forecaster based in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, Chantel has been guiding and climbing on Denali for well over a decade. As you’ll hear in Episode 44 of the Cutting Edge,, Ch...

Vitaliy Musiyenko fell in love with California's High Sierra in his early 20s. A decade later, at age 34, he is among the most prolific and accomplished explorers of the Range of Light, having climbed well over 100 long new routes. For much of this time, he has dreamed of putting all this experience to the test on a massive traverse of the Sierra Crest: by far the biggest technical traverse ever a...

Our guest this episode is the Czech climber Marek Holeček, among the most successful alpine climbers of the past two decades. Holeček has climbed new routes all over the world, from Kyrgyzstan to Patagonia, Antarctica to Afghanistan. Two of his biggest successes came in the past five years, when he was already in his 40s: new routes on Gasherbrum I in Pakistan and Chamlang in Nepal, both of which...

Ines Papert from Germany accomplished many of her greatest climbs while raising a small child. In this special episode, Sarah Hart interviews Ines about the challenges of combining motherhood with intense ambition as a climber, about forging new paths for women, and about climbing with your romantic partner. Ines and her partner (now husband), Luka Lindic from Slovenia, just finished a trip to Ala...

In late April, on their third trip to Alaska's remote and forbidding Mt. Neacola, Ryan Driscoll, Justin Guarino, and Nick Aiello-Popeo made the first complete ascent of the north face (a.k.a. the Medusa Face). The New Hampshire–based trio followed the line of a visionary 1995 attempt by Topher Donahue and Kennan Harvey until high on the wall, then added another full day of sustained climbing to to...

For more than a decade, Maryna Kopteva has been one of the world’s most accomplished climbers in a demanding style: big-wall first ascents on remote, high, and cold mountains. The Ukrainian woman has done new routes on Great Trango Tower in Pakistan, Tengkangpoche in Nepal, and the Golden Sentinel in India, among others. And what makes these climbs even more special is that they all were done with...

Our guest in episode 38 is the globe-trotting adventurer Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll, who in February pulled off a mind-blowing feat of climbing: the first ever south to north traverse of the full Fitz Roy massif in Patagonia. This is the same spiky ridgeline that Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell traversed in 2014, but Sean did it in the opposite direction and he did all alone. And even though, as y...

Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold need no introduction. Our show with them about the speed record on the Nose of El Cap (Episode 8) was by far the most popular we've ever done. Now they're back to chat with Chris Kalman about the CDUL Traverse: the Continental Divide Ultimate Linkup in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. The two spent 36 hours in July doing 11 of the Park's most classic climbing...

Lynn Hill needs no introduction to the Cutting Edge audience: She is arguably the most ground-breaking female rock climber and big-wall free climber in the history of the sport. We asked Lynn to come onto the show not to talk about her climbs, however, but about her experiences as a woman climber, both at her peak as a professional (she free climbed the Nose of El Capitan in a day in 1994) and tod...

Priti and Jeff Wright are wrapping up the kind of year that most climbers only dream about. The young tech engineers took a sabbatical from work to experience "A Year in the Life of Colin Haley," inspired by the world-roaming alpinist who is one of their mentors. The result was more they could have imagined, despite all the obstacles of Covid-19: a summit of Cerro Torre, the "Six Classic North Fac...

Yuh-hai-has-kun (Mt. Robson) is one of North America's greatest peaks, despite rising to less than 4,000 meters or 13,000 feet. In early October, Ethan Berman (U.S.) and Uisdean Hawthorn (Scotland) completed a rare new route to the summit, climbing a 2,000-meter line up the Emperor Face, left of the classic Infinite Patience. In this episode, we speak with both men about their profound experience...

Chris Weidner and Bruce Miller worked four years on a new free climb up the Diamond, the northeast face of Longs Peak in Colorado. The Gambler's Fallacy (5.13b/8a) is one of the hardest routes up this cold granite wall, which rises to over 14,000 feet or 4,300 meters. In this episode, Chris talks about the process and partnership that led to this beautiful new free climb. The Cutting Edge is prese...

Nico Favresse from Belgium is well-known as a prolific explorer of new routes and long free ascents around the world: Baffin Island, China, Patagonia, Greenland, and more. But this summer, with COVID limiting travel and the impacts of climate chanage weighing on his mind, he partnered with Sébastien Berthe, also from Belgium, for a closer-to-home adventure. The two men biked through Austria, Germa...

In early July, Brandon Adams and Roger Putnam set a new speed record for climbing Mescalito, the classic El Cap aid route. In fact, they smashed the previous mark (which had stood for more than two decades) by nearly 10 hours. But to hear them tell it, the day was all about laughs and tunes. In Episode 31 of the Cutting Edge, AAJ correspondent and YOSAR team member Lauren DeLaunay gets their thoug...