Mountain Towns
Kalpa, Himachal Pradesh, Between the Apple Harvest and the First Snow
On a terraced slope at 2,960 m above the Sutlej, a Kinnauri village of 1,400 takes its annual rest. A report from the deodar groves below the Kinnaur Kailash range.
Routes editor
Rinpo Tsering
Rinpo Tsering has guided in the Khumbu since 2002 and is one of the few non-Western voices regularly publishing on Himalayan route history.
Beats
Published in Mountain Ledger
Rescues
A Khumbu Icefall Rescue by the Sherpa Mountaineering Cooperative
A serac collapse on the Khumbu Icefall on April 24 took six climbing Sherpas and one Western climber. The cooperative's rescue team brought down four living and three dead in a single day at the start of the climbing season.
Snow
The Dawn Patrol of Rogers Pass
Inside the Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks operations centre, the avalanche control team begins each winter morning before the highway opens.
Mountain Towns
Wānaka, New Zealand, Before the Ski Season
On the south island, between the late autumn hikers and the first ski-field opening, a lake town of 9,000 takes a brief pause. A report from the Cardrona road and the Mount Aspiring National Park gateway.
Routes
The East Buttress of Mount Whitney: A Long Sierra Day
A pitch-by-pitch account of the East Buttress of Mount Whitney, a classic Sierra alpine rock route, climbed car-to-car in late May.
History
Annapurna 1950: The Climb That Began the Eight-Thousand-Metre Era
Maurice Herzog's French expedition put two men on the first 8,000-metre summit on 3 June 1950. The descent took the next month and cost most of their fingers.
Cartography
Steck and Roper's High Sierra Climbs, Revisited at Fifty
A summer of testing the 1973 guidebook's route descriptions against the granite they describe, with notes on what holds and what has weathered.
Huts & Refuges
Summer Crew at LeConte Canyon
A backcountry ranger team keeps the John Muir Trail moving between Muir Pass and Bishop Pass. A summer with four rangers at 2,580 metres.
Guides
The Sherpa Mountaineering Cooperative at Twelve
A cooperative founded to keep Sherpa wages at home has, twelve years on, changed the economics of Khumbu guiding.