Writing

The story of a climbing adventure gone wrong in a remote Alaskan mountain range, the impossible rescue attempt that followed, and the fraught cost of survival.

We Can Learn Much About the Art of Hunkering Down From Polar Explorers.

In 1942, Lt. Joachim Ronneberg led a team of Norwegian skiers and resistance fighters on a raid against a German facility working on atomic bomb materials in the Telemark region of Norway.

What does it mean to become a “real climber”—and do you need to risk your life in the process? Seeking an answer, the author revisits the folly of his youthful climbs in the White Mountains, New Hampshire.

Newfoundland’ s ice climbing is awesome, only partially developed, and a long, long way from anywhere.

An ode to the Presidential Range, my first love.

When paragliding and alpinism meet—in northern new England. This one was super fun to write, and impossible to fact check.

Latok’s history is wild and compelling: just like the rescue of Alexander Gukov by the Pakistani army.

A profile of the late Jean Christophe Lafaille, one of the few people in the world capable of climbing 5.14 as well as 8000-meter peaks. Written for Ascent.

The trappings of the digital age follow a climber far north.

Could the record for New Hampshire’s burliest trail run—the AMC White Mountain Hut Traverse—have been set in 1963?

David Roberts, often referred to as the “dean of adventure writing,” is one the most prolific American climbing authors to date.

What does snotty French Symbolist Arthur Rimbaud have to do with outdoor adventure?

Ueli Steck was one of the finest alpinists in the world. This piece got a lot of flak, and I found myself scouring, word for word, the op-ed for weeks after it ran.

At 6,288 feet, Mount Washington’s height and features might not add up to much—but the mountain, the tallest in New Hampshire’s Presidential Range, hosts some of the only above-treeline terrain on the East Coast.

To say that Royal Robbins invented and saved modern climbing in one fell swoop might be a stretch, but not much of one.

In 1966 two German climbers became stranded on the Petit Dru, a tooth of ice granite in the Alps above Chamoix, France.

In 1978 Johnny Waterman spent 145 days alone on the Southeast Spur of Mt. Hunter.