Layton Kor, one of America’s greatest and most revered climbers of all time, has died. Kor rose to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960 by establishing a string of first ascents that included Castleton, The Titan and Standing Rock in Canyonlands, the Naked Edge in Eldorado, the South Face of Washington Column in Yosemite, the Yellow Wall on the Diamond, and Proboscis in The Yukon. ...

Jack Roberts died January 15 on Bridalveil Falls, the 400-foot Grade 5 ice climb outside Telluride, Colorado, a route he had done countless times. Says his wife, Pamela Ranger Roberts, "When they finally reached me in Cuba, over 24 hours later, and told me, I truly did not believe it. My first thought was, 'He can't be dead, he's in Telluride. NO WAY he could die in Telluride!'” ...

Legendary hold shaper Ian Powell comes to grips with addiction, destruction and his own creative form....

Three weeks ago, on February 11, Dan Osman would have turned 50. He died 15 years ago this year. A friend remembers adventures in bridge jumping with this climber and rope jumper who went bigger and bigger....

Mike Foley likes to draw, usually portraits, in charcoal. He spends anywhere from a couple of hours to a few days on a given drawing. “I like stuff that involves a lot of fine-detail work,” he says. “I’m pretty meticulous like that.” He also likes complex, “minute-detail” climbs....

Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk, ages 21 and 23, had chopped a bivy ledge at the base of the final headwall on the mammoth North Face of North Twin when the storm moved in. Still trying to climb amid snow, rain, spindrift and thin pro the next morning, Hayden had a thought: “Well, maybe we should start thinking about the descent.”...

Timing is everything, whether in snatching a small edge, efficiently stitching up a route, re-racking gear as I follow, watching the weather forecast, rushing from one client to another, catching the FedEx delivery truck, picking up my boss at the airport, getting the kids to school or meeting my climbing partner, who is also a single parent with a similar agenda. ...

It’s easy to miss the beauty in climbing—the places it takes you, and the rock itself—if you only try routes you can do straight away....

The legendary Eiger speed-climber Thomas Bubendorfer, 50, who blew everyone's collective mind in 1983 when he speed soloed the Eiger North Face in an astonishing 4:50, has been active again establishing hard new routes in the Northern Salzgurg Alps of Austria. ...

Nacho Sanchez goes against the grain. Hailing from Spain, best known for its sport climbing, Sanchez prefers his country’s boulders to its in-vogue sport crags. He is not only leading the charge to explore the overlooked blocks of Spain, but he is also pioneering his country’s first and only V15s....

Francesca Metcalf sits on her bedroom floor for over an hour, fixated, clicking and forming the top layer of a Rubik’s Cube. A few days later she wakes up and finds the Rubik’s Cube in her bed. “It’s a little sad,” the Boston-area climber, who turned 18 in March, says, “how much time I’ve put into it.”...

I’m still a traditional climber. So for me climbing must contain three elements: difficulty, danger and, most important, exposure. Exposure means there is no possibility for outside help. Exposure increases the higher up you are, the more remote your location, and the greater the difficulties encountered higher up. ...

The legendary French mountaineer Maurice Herzog has died at the age of 93....

Kurt Albert defined free climbing and took it to the remote mountains of the world. Behind the stories of wild adventures and great deeds, there was something exemplary in the life cut short....

Who is this kid living in an old Volvo, climbing burly cracks across the country and beyond?...

Mayan Smith-Gobat, 30, born of a New Zealand mountain-guide father and a German mother (also an alpine climber), is a most impressive all-arounder....

John Long, original Stonemaster and climbing's most popular writer, spills his guts....

An unassuming 24-year-old from Sandy, Utah, Nik Berry redpointed the 5.13d “ledge-to-ledge” version of the Salathé Wall (VI 5.13d) on El Capitan. ...

It is not every day that someone’s “person” contacts me, and when a voice on the phone asked if I could take a call from Tony Scott, I at first did not know who he was. A director, she said. His films included Top Gun, The Crimson Tide and others. “He’s pretty famous,” she added, and trust me that she was being helpful and not snide....

They are America's up-and-coming generation - but who are they, really?...