At about 11 a.m. on July 26, several groups of climbers were navigating one of Colorado's most famous ridge traverses, the line of blocks and gendarmes that separates El Diente Peak (14,159 feet) from Mount Wilson (14,246 feet) in the San Miguel Range. Though popular, the traverse is notorious for choss and proved deadly this morning....

The sound of rope sliding across coarse granite prompted me to turn and watch Rock and Ice intern Jonathan Vickers falling through the air. He was about 20 feet up, curled like a fetus, head turned earthward and emitting a growling yell....

Accident in Yosemite underlines the need to backup a popular rappelling method...

LATE LAST YEAR the climbing world was stunned when Harald Hari Berger, 34, died in an ice-climbing accident near Hintersee-Flachau, Austria. Berger, who began climbing in 1986, was an UIAGM mountain guide and professional climber, sponsored by top-shelf companies such as Petzl, The North Face and Lowa....

On February 4, Ian Mack, 23, OF Appleton, Wisconsin, started up the route Paradise, a four-star 5.9 at the Banana Belt crag, Owens River Gorge, a popular sport-climbing area on the East side of the Sierra Nevada....

March 11 was a bluebird day at the Soul Asylum, a limestone sport crag in the Utah Hills near Saint George, Utah. Ike Palatt, 21, on his first day of spring break from university in New York, was eager to warm up on the 110-foot Soul Train (5.12a), a line that starts slabby, then rears to vertical about halfway up. Belayed by friend and frequent climbing partner Jarret Hunter, Palatt tied in and sent the route. ...

THE PERILS OF BACK-CLEANING...

HANTAVIRUS AT RIFLE?...

Dennis Luther, 54, was a dedicated and veteran climber, establishing a slew of new routes in the Adirondacks from the early 1980s through 2007. At Poke-O-Moonshine, one of his favorite stomping grounds, he did first ascents of such popular routes as Son of a Mother (5.10b), Air Male (5.11c), Static Cling (5.10c) and, most recently, Pandemonium (5.10)....

PYRAMID PEAK (14,018 feet) is a craggy mountain located approximately 12 miles southwest of Aspen, Colorado. Unlike many of that state's gently sloped......

At 13,642 feet, the Jungfrau is the tallest peak in a massif that includes the Eiger (13,025 feet) and the Munch (13,474 feet). These craggy and winds......

Winter-weary climbers flock to the horizontally fractured, quartzite cliffs of New York's Shawangunks each spring eager to dust off racks and practice trad climbing on the many steep classics of every grade. On March 20, a Saturday, the popular Trapps area was in prime condition and climbers were trying a variety of routes....

After a late start because of threatening weather, James Reed, Blue Eisele and Eric Moore climbed 50 feet of fourth-class terrain to the first pitch o......

Runout results in fatal fall....