Owen Clarke

[Sponsored by Black Diamond]

Spoiler alert: All of them.

Everyone makes mistakes. Even your climbing partner of 10 years.

Okay, okay, not completely… but before you throw me and my ideas in the gulag, hear me out.

Twin brothers Damian and Willie Benegas, world-class Argentine alpine guides and mountaineering phenoms, sent this spectacular ice line on the North Face of Nuptse in 2003.

Hooman Apri, Abbas Jafari, Jean Weiss and Al Read put up a new route on Minaret Peak and summited nearby Alam-Kuh (15,906 feet) in 1998.

This 800-meter line was first climbed by Italians Alberto Zucchetti and Paolo Paglino and Englishman Graham Austick.

This 400-meter 5.12b tracks a line up one of South Africa’s most iconic (and remote) spires, Monk’s Cowl.

Spaniards Luis Miguel Soriano and David Cejudo Fernandez summited this peak in the Wakhan Corridor in 2005, one of the first virgin summits climbed in Afghanistan since the 1979 Soviet invasion.

In 2002 Steve Schneider, Heather Baer and Shawn Chartrand tackled this 1,600-foot line, then the hardest route in Mongolia.

In “Forgotten First Ascents,” Owen Clarke is digging up cool climbs from the past and talking to the climbers who made them happen. This week: Malaria, Rhumsiki Tower, Cameroon, 2007.

Athletes in isolation during the coronavirus crisis. A limited-run column from R&I columnist Owen Clarke. Follow along as he checks in with top climbers to see what they are up to in their quarantine. This week: Nina Caprez.