Over four days in May 2012, around 250 Westerners and 270 Sherpas and Tibetans summited Mount Everest. For many, attaining the highest point on Earth was the culmination of endless training, personal sacrifices and hard work to achieve a meaningful and fulfilling lifelong dream....

I had been in Caracas, Venezuela, for less than three hours when Alfredo turned to Cory and me, and said: “Don’t talk to anyone, don’t let anyone know that you’re foreign, and try not to be seen by anyone. Bad people live here.” ...

A leading American tours the birthplace of bouldering, Fontainebleau, France, and reports on how for a hundred years “Font” has been the stage for the most difficult moves on rock. ...

The first ascent of the Great Slab on El Cap sparked climbing’s biggest character assassination, a fit that began with chopped ropes and now, nearly 30 years later continues with online vitriol that is piled nearly as high as the Big Stone itself. With the second ascent of the wall completed just this summer after countless days and some 500 feet of falls, redemption for the FA team may finally be at hand....

I had never kissed a girl, so when a naked one came up to me and started asking questions about the climb I had just tried, I was a little thrown. Painfully shy, I’d always wondered how I would ever ask a girl to go climbing, and now a naked one was here asking me if I knew of a place where she could learn....

“If I ever did a first ascent,” my friend Brandi said, “I would call it Super Wuss.” After belaying Brandi for nearly an hour as she hung, battled and grunted up the red 5.6 at the Boulder Rock Club, I could see that she was probably not destined for new routing. But the name made me laugh, and I thought it deserved a home on a future first ascent....

Jorge Colon took numerous wrong turns but eventually we arrived at the largest slaughterhouse on the island of Puerto Rico. Jorge, a local climber and a dog lover who runs a kennel, had come here so he could purchase an industrial-sized bone cutter and a large bag of bovine tripe to be used for dog food. ...

I've spent the last decade traveling to the world’s best sport-climbing areas, but a recent trip to my old stomping grounds reminded me of how good we have it here at home. Rumney, New Hampshire, is a rather small area but it is stacked with over 700 sport routes spread out over 20some crags on Rattlesnake Mountain....

My home in Colorado is day-tripping distance from the Diamond, but every summer for the last few years I have forsaken the Rockies to answer the siren call of California’s High Sierra. ...

The mossy green forest of Magic Woods radiates upward out of the steep valley until it meets the sharp, snow-capped peaks of the Swiss Alps. The contrast is sublime....

The normally clear skies over St. George, Utah, turned black and rained on the morning of the second annual Moe’s Valley clean-up and comp, soaking the sandstone boulders. ...

The best bet I ever lost was with Andy Burr over which of us was crazy enough to jump off the 50-plus-foot Henningsvaser, Norway, bridge. At home I jump into the Colorado River after nearly every climbing trip, and at my first look at the bridge, I said, “I’ve run bigger waterfalls than this in my kayak. I’m jumping in.” ...

After years of stagnation, Ice and Mixed climbing take an evolutionary leap forward on Helmcken Falls....

I was gambling: two kings face down in front of me, and a third in the middle of the table, along with two spades and half my chips. I shoved my remaining $150 into the middle. Of course my opponent called and turned over two more spades. Climbing photographers aren’t the highest-paid people in the world, so a $540 pot was plenty to fire my adrenal glands into hyperdrive. ...

Every couple of years, my son Tim, Jr. and I take a climbing trip together. Usually we pick one of my “dream climbs”—those classic routes that you always hear about, but seem too difficult to consider seriously. But my son encourages me to climb harder than I think I can, and together we have done The Scenic Cruise, The Naked Edge, Primrose Dihedrals and most recently Lotus Flower Tower. It is especially cool for me both to tick a lifetime goal and climb with my son....

Some routes or formations you climb for a physical challenge, and some because they are beautiful, but some things you climb because they explode out of the ground like granite rockets promising to take you to the moon. That’s the initial allure of the Incredible Hulk (11,040 feet) on the east side of the California Sierras....