Alpinist Magazine

Alpinist 85 features Alan Rousseau’s story about the first alpine-style ascent of Jannu’s north face, by a new route, with Jackson Marvell and Matt Cornell last October. After three years of effort, the trio managed to climb and descend the shady big wall on the 7710-meter peak in seven days, but not before two of them sustained small amounts of frostbite. They named their route Roundtrip Ticket (AI5+ M7, 2700m). With this story, Rousseau adds a new chapter to the Mountain Profile that Paul Hersey and Andy Lindblade wrote for Alpinist 57 (2017), in which Hersey asserts, “The history of Jannu ... reflects, in part, the development of alpinism in the Greater Ranges: the shift from siege tactics toward a lightweight approach.”

Elsewhere in the magazine, Caro North recounts the Via Sedna expedition, in which she convenes a team of eight women—four sailors, three climbers and a photographer—to sail a fifteen-meter boat from France to Greenland to climb a new route on Northern Sun Spire. Unusually stormy seas thwarted their voyage and left only a handful of days to complete the climb, but the team was able to realize their dream and come home better friends than before. Claire Giordano documents a changing landscape on Mt. Baker with swaths of color. Brandon Blackburn interviews Edmund February about how he overcame racist norms to pursue his passions as a climber and academic during South Africa’s apartheid. And Nikki Smith taps into some of her most cherished memories associated with Utah’s ice climbs. And much, much more.