Trip Reports - United States

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• Research Report (2006): Ice Age Glaciers And Precipitation Patterns In The Sangre De Cristo Mountains
  January 2010 - United States » Sangre de Cristo Mountains

  Kurt Refsnider, an AAC member and recipient of one of the club’s Research Grants in 2006, has had a paper on his research project published in the journal Boreas (October 2009). Refsnider, a scientist at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research in Boulder, Colorado, investigated the influence of different moisture sources on glaciers in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Colorado during the peak of the last ice age. The AAC grant, along with ...

• Research Report (2009): Alpine Meadows In Washington State
  December 2009 - United States » Cascades

  Kevin Ford, recipient of a 2009 AAC Research Grant, has completed the first year of his research on the alpine meadows of Mt. Rainier National Park. Ford is modeling the effects of climate change on the size and location of alpine habitat in the park.

  To read his first-year report, click on the PDF link above.

   

• Attempt On The Tooth Traverse, Ruth Gorge
  July 2009 - United States » Alaska Range

  McNeill-Nott Award winner Zack Smith describes his expedition to the Ruth Gorge in the summer of 2009.

  In alpine climbing you do your best to anticipate the potential crux of a trip. You physically and mentally prepare for bad weather, loose rock, huge days, anything you can imagine. For the first time ever, just getting on the airplane and deciding to go was the hardest part of our trip. The day before Renan Ozturk and I ...

• New Routes In The Mendenhall Towers, Alaska
  July 2009 - United States » Mendenhall Towers, Southeast Alaska

  Mountain Fellowship winner Blake Herrington reports on his recent run of big new rock climbs in Alaska.

  On July 9, Jason Nelson and I caught a helicopter from Juneau to the Mendenhall Glacier’s upper reaches, intending to climb new routes among the Taku or Mendenhall towers. Jason is from Ouray, Colorado, and knows how to climb rock and Ice. I am from Bellingham, Washington, and know how to schwack through brush, cook one-stove meals during a ...

• Research Report (2009): Perceptions On Denali
  June 2009 - United States » Alaska Range

  Jon Kedrowski from Texas State University spent more than a month on Denali this past season—including a trip to the summit via the West Buttress—in order to conduct a study entitled “Climbers’ Perceptions on McKinley: Crowding Concerns, Hazards, and Climber Demographics.” The researcher handed out written surveys to climbers at Kahiltna base camp, and then analyzed the results in the report that you can download on this page.

  One interesting finding was that climbers’ fears about ...

• Denali's Forgotten Wall
  June 2009 - United States » Alaska Range

  Tyler Jones from Idaho and Joel Kauffman from Montana won a 2009 McNeill-Nott Award from the AAC for an attempt on the so-called Forgotten Wall: a 1,700-meter technical face between Denali’s northwest ridge and the Wickersham Wall. To avoid the serac-threatened direct approach to the face, they hatched an ambitious plan: They would descend from Denali’s west buttress to the Peters Glacier, climb up the northwest ridge to 3,900 meters, and then rappel 700 meters ...