Alpinist 66

Alpinist Magazine Issue 66 – Summer 2019

Featuring Yosemite climber Lonnie Kauk (the son of legendary climber Ron Kauk
and Ahwahneechee descendant and basketmaker Lucy Parker). In an oral history,
friends and family join Lonnie in narrating his journey from growing up
beneath the granite cliffs of Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La (El Capitan) to seeking to honor
his ancestors through his first redpoint ascent of his father’s Magic Line,
considered one of the most difficult single-pitch trad climbs in the Valley.

Features

Magic Line
The son of legendary climber Ron Kauk and Ahwahneechee descendant Lucy Parker,
Lonnie Kauk has long felt a deep connection to the rocks of his home in
Yosemite Valley. In this oral history, Lonnie, friends and family recount his
journey from growing up beneath the granite cliffs of Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La (El
Capitan) to making the first redpoint ascent of his father’s Magic Line, once
considered the most difficult single-pitch climb in the Valley.

Moonshadow
Jeremy Collins reflects on a few of the luminaries of Zion––from the
Indigenous Paiute people to legendary climber Jeff Lowe and famed painters and
artists––in the only way he knows how: climbing the sandstone towers and
picking up a pencil to draw. In Collins’s attempt to free climb Moonlight
Buttress, he finds just what he was looking for in its shadow.

Thirteen Feet Under
Last April, while scouting ice climbs deep within Canada’s Banff National
Park, Michelle Kadatz was engulfed by an avalanche that swept her 650 feet
down slope and buried her at a depth far beyond the reach of her partners›
avalanche probes. Her improbable rescue, however, wasn’t as unusual as what
she experienced while entombed thirteen feet under. A year layer, Jayme Moye
recounts Kadatz’s accident.

Through the Lens
In 2015 Amy Liu was at base camp preparing for an ascent of Chomolungma (Mt.
Everest) when an earthquake hit Nepal. Struck in her tent by avalanche debris,
Liu was later air-lifted from base camp to a hospital. During her long
recovery, she traveled to the Canadian Rockies, where she discovered that
seeing mountains through a new lens could help restore her connection to the
landscape.
Departments

Sharp End
Climbing in the «Age of Wonder.»

Letters
One reader reflects on «The Secret of Silence»; another remembers her son.

On Belay
At 4000 meters, the Spiti Valley is home to one of the highest concentrations
of unclimbed waterfall ice in India. In January 2019, a group of climbers and
reporter Maya Prabhu convened for the first-ever Piti-Dharr Ice Climbing
Festival to explore some of the remote, jeweled falls. Meanwhile, Diné climber
Len Necefer ventures to Waw Giwulk, a sacred peak to the Tohono O’odham people
in southern Arizona.

Tool User
For thousands of years, humans have left traces of their presence on mountain
summits. Herein, Allison Williams documents the rise of a peculiarly American
method of chronicling ascents: the summit register.

Climbing Life
Austyn Gaffney seeks out vistas. Cassidy Randall chronicles the life and times
of mountaineer Mary Vaux, one of the few women studying glacial recession at
the end of the nineteenth century. Chip Brown considers what the mountain
kept. Tami Knight forgets her password, while Derek Franz searches for words
among the rocks. And Don Nguyen becomes a mountain guide.

Full Value
William Dwyer III recounts a tale from deep within a crevasse at the bottom of
the earth—and of his reorientation to life above ground.

Wired
In 1827, at the dawn of glacier science, physics professor James D. Forbes
first set foot on the Mer de Glace, the largest glacier in Chamonix. Herein,
John Hessler recounts the professor’s earliest field experiments on the laws
of glacial motion and the new relevance of complex fluid dynamics equations in
an era of global climate change.

Local Hero
Michael A. Estrada profiles Emily Taylor, the first known Black woman to climb
the Nose and the founder of Brown Girls Climbing, whose work to make US
climbing more diverse feels more momentous to Taylor than the moment she stood
atop El Capitan.

Off Belay
Anna Callaghan goes far and away on the Ptarmigan Traverse.