Hersey initially quit the climb after feeling ill at base camp, so Deavoll, unwilling to abandon the mountain without an attempt, prepared to start solo. Feeling better, Hersey accompanied Deavoll to ABC (4200m) and belayed her through the lower rock bands. Despite a lack of bivy gear, he then decided to accompany her to the high camp.

On summit day, Deavoll climbed a rock band and consolidated snow before entering a labyrinth of exposed traverses and debris-littered gullies. At one point she was forced to descend 100m to traverse through poor snow to reach seventy-degree ice on the summit ridge. Summiting in good weather at midday, she retraced her route back to camp at 5100m--Hersey had already descended--where she spent the night before returning to ABC.

Deavoll declined to grade the route, which had been attempted in 2007 by the Italian climber Ivo Ferrari.

"The main obstacle for me was route finding and the enormous size of the face, and I guess, having the confidence to go on by myself knowing my partner was not up to coming to look for me," Deavoll said.

Choosing Karim Sar as an objective was the result of two earlier expeditions to nearby Beka Brakai Chhok (6940m). In 2007, Deavoll was denied that summit when her team attempted a difficult route. It was on this expedition that she first spotted Karim Sar from a distance. In 2008, a seven-day storm shut down the team at 6000m, and conditions were so disastrous that they retreated from 6400m. Simone Moro climbed the peak later that season. This year, when Deavoll's planned expedition to the unclimbed south face of Kampire Dior (7000m) was canceled due to the Taliban's occupation of the nearby Swat Valley, Karim Sar seemed a worthy objective.

Sources: Patricia Deavoll, Paul Hersey, Asghar Ali Porik, Nazir Sabir, patdeavoll.co.nz

This May, Denis Urubko and Boris Dedeshko made an unprecedented alpine-style ascent of Cho Oyu's southeast face. This November, the pair received the fourth Piolet d'Or Asia award for their climb.

"For his last (14th) 8000er, Urubko originally planned a speed ascent on Cho Oyu's normal route," said a report on mounteverest.net. "When Chinese politics closed the mountain, Denis decided to attempt Cho Oyu not from China--but from Nepal--via the South-East Face."

Yuji Hirayama, Young-Seung Park and Oh Eun-Sun also received awards.

Please visit mounteverest.net for more on this story.

A new 2400-meter line now traces the north face of Peak Pobeda (7439m) in the Tien Shan. From August 20-28, Vitaly Gorelik and Gleb Sokolov of Russia scaled the massive buttress in alpine style, eventually reaching a subpeak along the ridge to the west of the main summit. The pair then spent a day and a half descending and returned safely to base camp on August 29.

Please visit climbing.com for more on this story.

British alpinists Nick Bullock and Andy Houseman have completed one of Nepal's most coveted challenges: the 1500-meter north face of Chang Himal (aka Wedge Peak, 6750m) in the Kanchenjunga Himal.

The team confirmed ascent via satellite phone text. The message said the pair had returned to base camp safely on November 3.

The north face of Chang Himal was featured in "Unclimbed," a feature in Alpinist 4 documenting the most striking unclimbed lines in the world.

Please visit planetmountain.com for more on this story.

Wilder's route follows delicate and dynamic climbing through an old aid line on the north face of Devil's Thumb, the prominent overhanging pillar visible from Boulder. McCormick's route follows an incipient seam to a rest, then enters a series of V8 moves high above gear.

Both climbers dedicated months to their quiet obsessions, and both chose to headpoint the climbs because of serious fall potential. On an early lead, McCormick took a nasty "cartwheel whipper" off the crux. (A video of his fall is posted here.)

Despite the danger, Wheelin N' Dealin was quickly repeated by McCormick's friend, Peter Kamitses.

Wilder has made ascents of some of the Boulder area's most difficult gear climbs, including Viceroy (5.14a/b R). But he found Cheating Reality particularly meaningful.

Among friends, Wilder was first to recognize the line's free potential. And because "the feature is so prominent and the climbing is very good," he said, the 75-minute hike is well worth it.

The route also may influence future development in the area, Wilder said.

"It shows that there is more potential in the Flatirons. As far as the sport is concerned, it shows that hard beautiful new climbs can still be done on all gear."

McCormick aired similar sentiment about Wheelin N' Dealin. He hopes the route will inspire climbers to visit the area and try other unclimbed lines.

"It's really exciting that you see people like Matt [Wilder] and many others pushing standards on gear," McCormick said of Wilder's climb.

"Looks like a great climb," Wilder said of McCormick's route. "I used to climb at the Spider's Web when I was in college... It would be great to get back out there and try it some time. His bad fall looked pretty scary though--I'm glad I didn't take any of those on my route."

Sources: Matt Wilder, Matt McCormick, mattmccormickclimbing.blogspot.com, mattwilderclimbing.blogspot.com

The prizes will be announced officially tomorrow evening, November 5, in the Eric Harvie Theatre at The Banff Centre.

Jerry Moffatt's Revelations won Grand Prize; Steve House's Beyond the Mountain won Best Book, Mountain Literature; Borge Ousland's The Great Polar Journey: In the Footsteps of Nansen won Best Book, Adventure Travel; Matevz Lenarcic's The Alps: A Bird's Eye View won Best Book, Mountain Image; Sarah Garlick's Flakes, Jugs and Splitters won Best Book, Mountain Exposition; David Roberts' The Last of His Kind: The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer won Best Book, Mountaineering History; Royal Robbins' memoir To Be Brave: My Life, Volume One won Special Jury Mention; and Bruce Hunter's In the Bear's House won the Canadian Rockies Award.

The jury--Stephen Goodwin (United Kingdom), Jon Popowich (Canada) and Susan E.B. Schwartz (United States)--selected the eight books from 101 submissions. Some winners will receive cash prizes, up to $2,000.

More information on the 16th annual Banff Mountain Book Festival and 34th annual Banff Mountain Film Festival are available at banffcentre.ca.

Samuel Anthamatten, Simon Anthamatten and Michael Lerjen climbed the 1550-meter wall in alpine style, finding steep ice, large snow mushrooms, a 150-meter band of rock near the summit and lots of snow slogging that slowed their progress.

After summiting at 2:30 p.m. on the 29th, the trio began their rappels. In a blog report, Simon Anthamatten likened the striking peak to the Matterhorn. "Once you reach the summit," he said, "you are only half way through."

The descent required 25 rappels on v-threads, stoppers, Camalots, a buried ice ax and telescope stick segment, the blog report said. The team reached base camp on October 30; they are en route to Switzerland today.

More information will be posted on Alpinist.com when it becomes available.

Sources: Simon Anthamatten, anthamattens.ch, climbing.com

The team had planned to ascend a new route on the north face, right of Inside Line, in capsule style. However, after two weeks of exhausting climbing they traversed into Inside Line, which they followed to the top.

On September 26, Valery Shamalo, Vladimir Molodozhen, Denis Sushko, Andrey Muryshev and Eugeniy Korol acquired their permit in Chengdu. From Rilong, they trekked to base camp (3700m), where Korol soon fell ill, was taken to hospital and eventually returned to Moscow.

On October 4, the remaining four left base camp to approach the wall. It took one day.

Fearful of not finding snow for melting, and to avoid moving camp frequently, the team brought eight ropes. On October 6, they began climbing and established a portaledge atop Pitch 3.

A snowstorm on October 7-8 temporarily halted the Russians. When the weather cleared, they began slow but steady progress for 10 days up steep rock amid regular icefall and rockfall. They were burdened by arduous skyhooking and bolting.

And by injury. On October 9, a chunk of ice put Shamalo, the team's most experienced climber, out of commission for three days. On the upper wall, Molodozhen got frostbite. And despite a 40-meter fall, Muryshev pushed on uninjured.

Tedious climbing eventually brought them to an overhanging section less than halfway up the wall on October 18. After working through the steep section, they traversed left into the crux of Inside Line.

Fixing lines on vertical and overhanging ice on the 19th, the team tried for a summit push on the 20th. But after a mixed pitch went very slowly and Sushko took a 15-meter fall, the party of four retreated eight pitches, back to the portaledge.

The next day, Shamalo and Molodozhen ascended the fixed lines, taking two with them for more lightweight progress above. They reached the summit and rappelled back to the portaledge by midnight. They left the ropes fixed for their teammates, who made a summit push on the 22nd while Shamalo and Molodozhen descended to catch their flight back to Russia.

All ropes and waste were removed from the wall.

Though pleased with their summit, Shamalo said the wandering route line traces a big question mark: It is a pity we could not climb our original aim, he said.

More information will be posted on Alpinist.com as it becomes available.

Sources: Anna Piunova, AAJ, mountain.ru

With support from an American Alpine Club Mountain Fellowship Grant, the team completed two jungle climbs--first reported in the October 27, 2009 NewsWire--in the Mulanje Massif last month. The first was a free ascent of Lower Chambe Face (aka the Eastwood Route, III 5.10d, 2,000') that avoided a pre-existing bolt ladder. The second was a new route, Nkhalango Khoswe (IV 5.10, 3,000'), on the wall above. Both climbs were done ground up, onsight and free, save for the occasional "Tarzan vine move."

Roop and Forrester first became interested in Malawi a year ago when they stumbled across climber Alard Hufner's website documenting his ascent of the Eastwood Route.

But new routing was not the only purpose for a medical student and future grad student in molecular virology to travel to the area.

"While there are many relatively unclimbed large jungle walls in Africa," Forrester said, "Malawi was an ideal location to... climb and give something back to the community we visited... The HIV rate is staggering, the health care system is well set up, travel is relatively straightforward and one of the national languages is English."

After climbing Nkhalango Khoswe, Roop began instituting an HIV treatment protocol for a local nongovernmental organization in Blantyre, Malawi; he will remain there for two more months in support of the project.

The two began their travels in late September. Five days later they arrived at a Scottish mission in Likhubula, where they based operations for the climbs. A local guide showed them how to navigate the four-hour hike from the mission to the base of the Eastwood Route. On October 3, they again made the trek with a rope and light rack and began by soloing the first thousand feet, difficulties reaching 5.7.

"The climbing was surreal," Forrester said. "Large vellozia bushes and clumps of grass on the face had been recently burned in a large wildfire and we climbed upwards amongst ash and charred trees that lent a very post-apocalyptical feel."

To avoid the bolt ladder at the crux, Roop led an overhanging fist and offwidth crack at 5.10d that soon returned to more mild terrain.

At the jungle step between the lower and upper walls, they bushwhacked for three hours, avoiding cobras, mambas and baboons known to frequent the area.

A search for crack systems to the north of the Upper Eastwood Route proved unsuccessful. Heading south, however, they found a continuous system left of Roshnik's route, the only other known route on the face, that appeared both striking and climbable. They stashed climbing gear and hiked off the lower step back to Likhubula.

They returned to their cache on October 6 and bivied at the base of the crack system. The next day they simulclimbed the route's many easy pitches, mostly 5.5 and up to 5.8. They pitched out what they called "Shelob’s Lair": an ominous 600-foot 5.10 bomb bay chimney that was crawling with "nasty critters" like spiders and scorpions.

Above the lair they found more vegetated terrain and "loosely adhered vellozia trees that we could lasso for protection" en route to the summit.

They placed no fixed gear on either climb.

Forrester said the area was a magical place to climb, but he admitted that the rock wasn't exactly splitter.

"What looked like a relatively clean crack system from below turned out to be a nightmarishly vegetated slot for 3,000 feet." He added that the upper climb required "every jungleneering skill we had."

Source: Joseph Forrester

Yannick Graziani and Christian Trommsdorff, alpinists celebrated for their extremely long and difficult routes in the greater ranges, have added another climb to their repertoire. From October 11-15, the pair worked up the south spur of Nemjung (7140m), a lesser-known peak in the Nepalese Himalaya near Manaslu, the pair's original objective.

The Frenchmen climbed 2300 meters of mostly ice, mixed and snow to the top of the south wall. They gave the 45 pitches a grade of ED+.

They did not summit, however. Trommsdorff was injured on October 14 when a chunk of ice struck him in the helmet. Close to the ridgeline, he and Graziani continued to the top of the wall, which they reached the next afternoon. They descended on October 16.

Please visit climbing.com for more on this story.