https://mountain-ledgers.co Routes, refuges, and the silence above the snowline. en-US Sun, 14 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/kungsleden-northern-section-late-spring-traverse/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/kungsleden-northern-section-late-spring-traverse/ Sun, 14 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke routes An account of the northern section of the Kungsleden trail in Swedish Lapland, walked over five days in late May, with practical notes on water, snow, and hut etiquette. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-finse-station-as-a-mountain-house/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-finse-station-as-a-mountain-house/ Sun, 14 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg huts-and-refuges Finse is the highest stop on the Bergen Line at 1,222 metres. The station and its adjacent DNT hut have functioned as a single mountain establishment for over a century. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/british-mountaineering-council-route-database/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/british-mountaineering-council-route-database/ Sun, 14 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke cartography The British Mountaineering Council's online route system has grown to 140,000 routes. The printed guidebook is still being written. The two are arguing. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/kalpa-himachal-in-shoulder-season/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/kalpa-himachal-in-shoulder-season/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rinpo Tsering mountain-towns 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. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/patagonia-fitzroy-1952-french-italian/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/patagonia-fitzroy-1952-french-italian/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo history Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone climbed Cerro Fitz Roy in February 1952 in conditions that the Patagonian guides of the period considered unclimbable. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/snow-assessment-decision-guide-tour/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/snow-assessment-decision-guide-tour/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg guides How an alpine guide on a routine ski tour in the Stubai made the snow call that turned the day around. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/tasmanian-tarkine-bushwalker-helicopter-recovery/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/tasmanian-tarkine-bushwalker-helicopter-recovery/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke rescues Tasmania Police Search and Rescue brought a bushwalker out of the upper Donaldson River catchment after a four-day search in temperate rainforest. The terrain made every method except long-line evacuation impractical. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/a-warden-shortage-in-the-high-tatras/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/a-warden-shortage-in-the-high-tatras/ Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg huts-and-refuges Slovakia's mountain huts are full and short-staffed. A summer 2026 visit to Chata pri Zelenom plese and a conversation about the trade. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/ifmga-cartographer-bench-chamonix/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/ifmga-cartographer-bench-chamonix/ Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann cartography Many alpine guides keep their own private maps. A morning with one of them, in a small flat above the Rue Whymper. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/north-ridge-piz-badile-granite-classic/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/north-ridge-piz-badile-granite-classic/ Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann routes An account of the north ridge of the Piz Badile in the Bregaglia, climbed over twelve hours in early June, with notes on the line's hundred-year history. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/a-night-with-the-snow-removal-crew-of-stelvio-pass/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/a-night-with-the-snow-removal-crew-of-stelvio-pass/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo snow Each May, a small team of road workers cuts the Stelvio Pass open from both sides, a kilometre at a time, through walls of snow that can stand five metres high. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/leavenworth-washington-after-icicle/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/leavenworth-washington-after-icicle/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke mountain-towns Between the last spring climbers in Icicle Canyon and the arrival of summer tourists for the Bavarian-themed village, the small Cascade town of 2,200 has perhaps three quiet weeks. A report from Front Street and the canyon trailheads. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/henry-snyder-1932-minya-konka/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/henry-snyder-1932-minya-konka/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg history A small American party climbed a 7,556-metre peak in Sichuan during a Chinese civil war and walked the trade route out to French Indochina. The climb is barely remembered. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/khumbu-icefall-sherpa-cooperative-rescue/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/khumbu-icefall-sherpa-cooperative-rescue/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rinpo Tsering rescues 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. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/south-ridge-aiguille-du-tour-first-alpine-climb/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/south-ridge-aiguille-du-tour-first-alpine-climb/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann routes A patient account of the south ridge of the Aiguille du Tour, the route most often chosen as a first alpine summit in the Mont Blanc range. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-cic-hut-under-the-north-face/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-cic-hut-under-the-north-face/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke huts-and-refuges The Charles Inglis Clark Memorial Hut sits in Coire Leis at 680 metres, almost directly under the Ben Nevis North Face. A century of climbing has passed through its door. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/guides-pay-rates-comparison-2026/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/guides-pay-rates-comparison-2026/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann guides The day rate of an alpine guide in 2026, compared across six ranges and four certification systems. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/norwegian-kartverket-and-the-jotunheimen-revision/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/norwegian-kartverket-and-the-jotunheimen-revision/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg cartography How the Norwegian Mapping Authority is re-drawing the contour lines of the country's roof, one ridge at a time. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-glaciologists-of-the-saint-elias/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-glaciologists-of-the-saint-elias/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg snow On an upper basin of the Kaskawulsh Glacier in Kluane National Park, a four-person research team spent twelve days in May measuring how fast a great mass of ice is changing. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/courmayeur-soccorso-alpino-grandes-jorasses/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/courmayeur-soccorso-alpino-grandes-jorasses/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo rescues A spring storm on the Walker Spur caught two French climbers at the second band. The Aosta Valley rescue service brought them off the wall by long-line in a four-hour window between weather systems. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/haute-route-chamonix-zermatt-april-conditions/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/haute-route-chamonix-zermatt-april-conditions/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg routes A daily account of the classic ski mountaineering traverse from Chamonix to Zermatt, completed in seven days in mid-April under shifting spring conditions. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-rifugio-bonatti-as-it-turns-eighteen/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-rifugio-bonatti-as-it-turns-eighteen/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo huts-and-refuges Built in 1998 on the high balcony route of the Val Ferret, the Rifugio Bonatti has become a familiar name to walkers of the Tour du Mont Blanc. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/courmayeur-in-late-spring/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/courmayeur-in-late-spring/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo mountain-towns Between the close of the ski lifts on the Cresta d'Arp and the opening of the via ferrata routes above Val Vény, a town of 2,800 at the foot of Mont Blanc takes its annual breath. A report from the Via Roma and the Skyway terminal. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/george-mallory-1924-archive/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/george-mallory-1924-archive/ Wed, 27 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke history A reading of the Mallory family correspondence at Magdalene College, Cambridge, which holds the unresolved last chapter of the 1924 Everest expedition. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/italian-igm-and-the-courmayeur-sheets/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/italian-igm-and-the-courmayeur-sheets/ Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo cartography Inside the Istituto Geografico Militare's Aosta Valley project, where a 1934 mapping convention is being slowly reconciled with modern lidar. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/women-in-guiding-aosta-valley/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/women-in-guiding-aosta-valley/ Sun, 24 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo guides In a valley where the guide trade was male for two centuries, three women now work full seasons. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-dawn-patrol-of-rogers-pass/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-dawn-patrol-of-rogers-pass/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rinpo Tsering snow Inside the Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks operations centre, the avalanche control team begins each winter morning before the highway opens. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/high-uintas-overdue-hunter-recovery/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/high-uintas-overdue-hunter-recovery/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann rescues Summit County Search and Rescue spent nine days in May looking for a sixty-six-year-old elk hunter who had not come home from a four-day solo trip into the Bald Mountain drainage. He was found three miles from his truck. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/east-buttress-mount-whitney-long-sierra-day/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/east-buttress-mount-whitney-long-sierra-day/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rinpo Tsering routes 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. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/wanaka-new-zealand-in-may/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/wanaka-new-zealand-in-may/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rinpo Tsering mountain-towns 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. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/a-winter-month-alone-at-cabane-de-moiry/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/a-winter-month-alone-at-cabane-de-moiry/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo huts-and-refuges The CAS Moiry hut closes to guests in October. A winter caretaker spent November 2025 there alone, by invitation of the Sierre section. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/annapurna-1950-french-expedition/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/annapurna-1950-french-expedition/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rinpo Tsering history 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. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/ordnance-survey-field-surveyors-snowdonia-today/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/ordnance-survey-field-surveyors-snowdonia-today/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke cartography A week with two OS surveyors walking the contours of Eryri, where the country's oldest mapping agency still sends people on foot. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/british-mountain-guides-aspirant-scotland/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/british-mountain-guides-aspirant-scotland/ Sun, 17 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke guides How the British Mountain Guides certify in conditions that have no analogue in the Alps. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/cairngorm-february-2024-rescue-revisited/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/cairngorm-february-2024-rescue-revisited/ Sun, 17 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg rescues Two years on from the Coire an t-Sneachda call-out that took thirty-one hours and four teams, Mountain Ledger walks the line of the rescue with the deputy team leader of Cairngorm MRT. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-snow-ranger-of-tuckerman-ravine/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-snow-ranger-of-tuckerman-ravine/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann snow For thirty-one springs, a US Forest Service snow ranger named Doreen Aikins has stood at the lip of the Headwall and decided who should ski and who should turn back. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/talkeetna-alaska-in-march/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/talkeetna-alaska-in-march/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg mountain-towns Six weeks before the first Denali expeditions arrive, the small town at the end of the spur road is busy with snow machines and quiet about what is coming. A report from the Roadhouse and the airstrip. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/eigerwand-recoveries-1936-1957/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/eigerwand-recoveries-1936-1957/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann history Two failed attempts on the north face of the Eiger left bodies on the wall. The recoveries — twenty-one years apart — became part of what the route now means. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/two-generations-guiding-tetons-davenport/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/two-generations-guiding-tetons-davenport/ Sun, 10 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann guides A father and a daughter, forty years apart, working the same routes out of Jenny Lake. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/tour-du-mont-blanc-eleven-day-rhythm/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/tour-du-mont-blanc-eleven-day-rhythm/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo routes An honest account of the Tour du Mont Blanc completed in eleven walking days in early June, written for trekkers planning their first long alpine circuit. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/a-sierra-observers-snowpit-notebook/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/a-sierra-observers-snowpit-notebook/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Henrik Solberg snow Across fourteen winters of fieldwork above Mammoth Lakes, an independent observer named Caleb Yost has filled forty-two notebooks with snow profiles, instability tests, and what they meant. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/summer-crew-at-leconte-canyon/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/summer-crew-at-leconte-canyon/ Fri, 08 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rinpo Tsering huts-and-refuges 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. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/steck-roper-high-sierra-climbs-revisited/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/steck-roper-high-sierra-climbs-revisited/ Fri, 08 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rinpo Tsering cartography A summer of testing the 1973 guidebook's route descriptions against the granite they describe, with notes on what holds and what has weathered. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/llanberis-tryfan-winter-call-out/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/llanberis-tryfan-winter-call-out/ Fri, 08 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke rescues A January call-out for two underprepared scramblers on Tryfan's North Ridge ended at one in the morning with a four-stretcher lower down Heather Terrace. The team has done fifteen Tryfan jobs already this winter. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/murren-before-the-lifts-open/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/murren-before-the-lifts-open/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lucia Marengo mountain-towns On a car-free shelf at 1,650 m, an Oberland village waits out the six-week gap between summer hikers and the first skiers. A report from the Hotel Eiger and the train down to Lauterbrunnen. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/first-ascent-mount-logan-1925/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/first-ascent-mount-logan-1925/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke history A forty-four-day approach, a tent at 5,400 metres, and the climb that effectively founded Canadian mountaineering as a national project. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/one-season-at-the-wendelstein-weather-station/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/one-season-at-the-wendelstein-weather-station/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann snow At 1,838 metres above the Bavarian foothills, a two-person crew kept the longest continuously operated alpine weather station in Germany running through a difficult winter. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/sherpa-mountaineering-cooperative-twelve-years/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/sherpa-mountaineering-cooperative-twelve-years/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rinpo Tsering guides A cooperative founded to keep Sherpa wages at home has, twelve years on, changed the economics of Khumbu guiding. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/crib-goch-winter-traverse-with-rope/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/crib-goch-winter-traverse-with-rope/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Cora Quirke routes A careful account of the Crib Goch ridge in February conditions, written for hill walkers thinking about their first winter scramble. https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-highest-hut-in-the-eastern-alps/ https://mountain-ledgers.co/post/the-highest-hut-in-the-eastern-alps/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Anders Hoffmann huts-and-refuges The Schiestlhaus sits at 2,156 metres on the Hochschwab plateau in Styria. Its solar passive design, completed in 2005, has quietly become a model.