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Five New Alpine Routes: Alaska, Alps and Patagonia

New alpine mixed routes in Alaska, Patagonia, Himalayas and the Alps

Photo by: Ben Lieber on Longing for the Light in Alaska

Alpine climbing season varies depending on where you are in the world and with travel restrictions in place this year, most top alpinists didn’t get a chance to chase the best conditions from range to range.

Some big new alpine climbs did go down in the past few weeks, below are five.

Pizzo Badille

Matteo Della Bordella and Silvan Schüpbach made the first ascent of Crossway of Friendship on the northeast face of Pizzo Badile in the Alps. The new route is dedicated to the late Matteo Bernasconi. The new  route, a varitation to existing lines, climbs the North Ridge to Linea Bianca.

K6 Central

Jeff and Priti Wright, a husband-wife team from Washington, recently completed the third ascent of K6 West (7,040m) and the first ascent of K6 Central (7,100m) on Oct. 8 and 9, and in alpine style. They returned the way they came: back up and over K6 West. The peaks are in the Pakistan-administered side of the Karakoram Range.

Raphael Slawinski and Ian Welsted first climbed K6 West in July 2013 by a route on the northwest face, for which they received a Piolets d’Or. In August 2015, Scott Bennett and Graham Zimmerman summited the peak by the Southwest Ridge M6 1,800m.

Patagonia

In mid-October, and inspired by photos from their friends earlier in the month, Antonia Alduna, Sebastian Pelletti, and Nico Secul visited Cerro Redondo in Patagonia where they opened Contra Corriente, a second line on the south face.

The first pitch climbs a steep waterfall (WI5 60m), to then follow snow-ramps (60Ëš) with short mixed sections. A traverse to the right led to another two-pitch ice section (to 90Ëš), and more snow and mixed terrain to reach the ridge. The summit offered incredible views of the entire southern Patagonia cordillera, from Cerro Fitz Roy to the north, and the Torres de Paine to the southwest. On the way back they crossed two Pato de los Torrentes swimming up-stream.

Alaska

Two new routes were climbed in Alaska’s Hayes Range this fall: DeWilde Style, an 800-metre AI4+ up the southeast face of Peak 9,250ft by Ben Lieber and Alex Hansen; and Longing For Light, a 700-metre AI5 on the northeast shoulder Mount Moffit by Lieber, Hansen and Austin Schmitz.

Visit Lieber below for more images and stories from their Alaskan expedition.

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Lead photo: Ben Lieber on Longing for the Light in Alaska