Alpinist Magazine Issue 44 | Autumn 2013 Back Issue

Beyond the crowds on Vinson's normal route, much of the Sentinel Range of Antarctica is a quiet fortress of precise geometry that remains scarcely visited. Yet despite the storms and bitter cold, a few climbers—like Mugs Stump and Erhard Loretan—have ventured up big routes in this unearthly landscape, usually in alpine style, often unheralded and alone. After years of mapping the region, Damien Gildea pieces together the history in this issue Mountain Profile. On the dirty, great and groaning Troll Wall in Norway, Andy Kirkpatrick begins to run out of willing partners. He finds the solution in two skiers who have no idea what lies ahead. Meanwhile, the English poet Helen Mort looks amid the gaps and silences of history at the life of Alison Hargreaves, whose memory still haunts the climbing community. While Peter Croft climbs with ghosts, Barry Blanchard responds to the Squishy Bunny Bunch; Editor Katie Ives and the artist Jeremy Collins honor the victims of the Nanga Parbat attack.