Photo by Rebecca Caldwell

Tommy Caldwell’s epic Dawn Wall project has been in the works for years. This season he stayed on the wall for 26 days straight, trying to work his way through the nearly impossible climb. He’s filed several posts for Patagonia. His project has gained attention not only for its difficulty, but also for the on-the-rock coverage in the Facebook age. Tommy filed this last post after packing it in at the end of the season.

Imagine a job promoting something you dearly love. Yes, these roles exist. The American Alpine Club is hiring a Conservation and Advocacy Director. You can have a job in the climbing industry that doesn’t in involve leading ungrateful clients and spending weeks on end away from your family while risking your life. The job listing doesn’t say how much the role pays, but you have to expect to take a bit of a hit for doing something you love. Besides, it’s in Golden, Colorado, so you can drink yourself green on cheap, crappy Coors beer.

Photo by Tim Engleman

In an apparent attempt to spend more money and resources rescuing stranded hikers and climbers in National Parks some people are pushing to eliminate guided access on public land. I suppose it would create more rescue jobs, and Washington’s big on that these days. In its current form the law would only affect some parks; The Alpine Institute has the whole story, including the email address for a guy who need his inbox filled with pleas to leave guiding open.

The film 40 Days at Base Camp is a documentary about a typical season on Everest; it’s making the rounds on the upcoming Banff Mountain Film Festival. From the film’s producers:

40 DAYS AT BASE CAMP provides a modern take on the transformation of Everest from what was once a revered, sacred space to the mountain theme park it is sadly becoming.

And it’s about to get even more theme-parky - the director has been commissioned to return to Everest the following season to shoot eight episodes for a reality TV show. If they bring over the cast of Horders they could get a lot of that mountain trash cleaned up.

via Adventure Blog

In this episode of The Season you meet Craig DeMartino, an accomplished climber and photographer in Colorado. Back in 2002 he took a fall after leading a 5.11 trad route so he could setup a top rope. There was a miscommunication with his partner, and after kicking off the wall he hit the ground 100 feet later.

via Wend

Photo: Becca Caldwell, The Cleanest Line

Tommy Caldwell filed a dispatch for The Cleanest Line about his and Kevin Jorgeson’s work on the Dawn Wall, the longest, blankest stretch of El Cap that the team is trying to free climb. They’ve been at it since 2007, working sections of the climb in the hopes that after freeing each section they’ll be able link everything together and put the project behind them.

The story of the climb is remarkable enough, but what’s really interesting is the mentality Caldwell’s developed - an addition to the pain of wearing himself down every day. I haven’t read much of Lance Armstrong’s stuff, but I’ve seen enough to hear him espouse the same addition, that love of suffering that demands their attention.

Alan Gordon compiled this film of himself climbing glaciers and exploring ice caves off-shooting from the Juneau ice field. He’s lived there for years, and seen the glacier melt accelerate. “My goal for the film is to show everyone places in time that won’t be there forever. It is an opportunity that I want to take to not only explore but to capture on film these beautiful places that are constantly evolving and melting away.”

Either it’s snowing super hard or the Everest webcam is down again. The solar powered camera was setup by a team of scientists who are seeking to measure the effects of global warming, and the feed is live from 6am to 6pm Himalaya time. I’m terrible at math so you’re on your own for local times. Right now the camera feed looks like a whiteout, so I’ll stop back in a few hours to see if it’s blackout. I heard that the webcam was invented by scientists who wanted to keep an eye on the coffeepot in the next room; glad to see we can now use them to keep an eye on glaciers on the other side of the world.

via Adventure Blog

A climber in Grand Teton National Park walked out of a couloir with the duos only climbing rope and left his friend to be rescued. To be fair, his partner had activated his SPOT beacon and a rescue helicopter had hovered over them while his partner indicated he required rescue before the guy left. What happened was the two were stranded, the one called for help while the other insisted he didn’t need it, and then once the one who didn’t need help saw the helicopter, he got out of there and hiked back. Then when he arrived home the park police issued him a ticket for disorderly conduct. The park said they issued him the ticket because he left before the rescue occurred and he took their only rope. It’s a very odd situation, and it’s easy to see both sides of the issue. But I will say that I’m glad the park police have one catch-all “disorderly conduct” ticket they can be issued to guys whether they’ve abandoned climbing partners or peed in the middle of the street.