Pico de Orizaba has been weighing on my mind for several years now. Originally, I had planned for a 2008 attempt, but my climbing buddies weren't able to come along so I postponed. In 2009, my friend Robbin, whom I met purely by chance when hiking in the Olympic mountains, told me she and her friend Mike where planning a trip to Mexico. An invitation to join them followed and soon I was committed to an attempt of the Mexican Volcanoes. Our plan was to start with the highest peak (Pico de Orizaba originally named Citlaltepetl which means Star Mountain) and work our way down, tagging as many summits as possible in 10 days. The second objective would be Iztaccihuatl which means "sleeping woman". The profile of that mountain is said to look like a woman laying down. Although our plans were flexible, one thing was certain, no matter how many days it would take us, Mexico's highest was our number one objective.

As luck would have it, a week of unusually warm and sunny weather held winter at bay for a spell. Uli invited me to climb on Saturday, and we decided to visit the south facing wall of the Kopfkraxen in the Wilder Kaiser. A very popular route called "Via Romantica" (VI+) climbs straight up to the summit in 15 pitches. Uli had seen web cams which promised very little snowcover. So, wearing our regular summertime gear of tennis shoes, double 50 meter ropes, a small rack (the route is mostly bolted), and just clothing and gloves a little warmer than usual, we found ourselves hiking up from the Jagerwirt at 7 am.

Talking about work and other things, we reached a beautiful waterfall at the base of a cliff and reorganized to leave one pack here. Above, we stomped out steps in the snow to reach the base of the route which is quite obvious.

I have had a climb for November 21st marked on my calendar for a while. The problem was I didn't know what I was going to climb. My first choice would have been Lost River Mountain since I'm trying to finish off the 12ers. After talking with my climbing partners Zach and Rob we decided it wasn't going to work. It was too far away for the amount of daylight left. We tossed around other ideas but never came to a conclusion. Finally I emailed John (Splattski) asking for suggestions. Since I haven't climbed with him for almost two years now I invited him to come. After a few more days of debate we finally settled on a suggestion from Splattski: The Box in the Pioneers. The forecast for the weekend called for cold, cloudy, and windy weather with a chance of snow. Zach said the cold didn't appeal to him so he opted out of the trip and headed South to the Owyhees. That left Rob, Splattski, and I to tackle The Box (11,305 ft.).

My name is Patrick Callery. Our friend David Shirley and I were climbing with Ishun Chan on the South Face route of the Obelisk when she was tragically killed on November 8, 2009. This report of the accident is provided with the hopeful intent to provide some answers for her many friends and loved ones, and with the hope that her tragic passing may in some way better inform the climbing community of potential dangers in our sport. While this is intended to generally be a technical account, I would first like to use this space to say a couple things about our friend, Ishun.

This is a little belated in getting posted but with the snow on the ground here in Lehi this morning, it seemed like a good idea to get caught up on some items that I had been meaning to get around to for awhile. In 2006 I had a great three day trip with my son and we enjoyed visiting some of the county highpoints in southern Utah together. After knocking off the toughest of the three that we did, Signal Peak (see trip report) outside of St. George, we spent our last day of vacation being tourists, enjoying the offerings of beautiful Bryce Canyon and then taking a slow way home to Salt Lake, where my son lived at the time.

Our "slow" way was via Dutton Peak, one of Utah's prominence peaks that has over 4000 feet of prominence and is a peak that is over 11 thousand feet high. This was an interesting detour as it took us through a badly burned forest, and then back to Salt Lake via Antimony and Big Rock Candy mountain.

Having heard several good recommendations about the "Keene Valley Hostel" in Keene Valley, NY, I decided to give it a shot instead of backpacking. I arrived at the hostel on a Sunday night without reservations to find several climbers and a family of hiker/canoers staying there. There were several empty beds but no owners to be found. The place was clean, inviting, and had some good hiking/climbing reading material. There was even free wireless internet. All in all,it seemed like a great place. When I eventually met the owners, Jake and Robin, I found them to be extremely nice. They seemed really into the fact that most of their guests were outdoors people doing some outdoor pursuit, which was cool. So, I relaxed and read for a bit, and then set my alarm for 5:15. I was out the door on the way to the ADK Loj at about 5:30. I was treated to some nice views along Loj Road.

Dan Protz and I had the first weekend of November free to climb. We went to the Dolomites for a grab bag of easy climbing. I was hoping to climb Torre Venezia after reading Radek's great report. But I was worried about cold and also felt out of shape for difficult climbing. Let's just do "5.easy" as a way of getting out and saying goodbye to the summer mountains!

Several of us met at the mouth of Courthouse Wash near Moab at 8 am. After meeting, we split into two groups and the two groups went our separate ways. The group we (Kimberly and I) chose was a combination of old friends/acquaintances and new friends. AJ, Mark, Mark, Rebecca and Justin came. I already knew Justin and AJ from previous trips, but the other ones are new friends.

The first route of the agenda was a route known as U-Turn. It isn’t quite a climbing route and it isn’t quite a canyoneering route, though it is often referred to as either, but was more of a scramble up to the top of an interesting dome followed by a descent of a minor drainage via a few downclimbs and rappels.

I had said goodbye to Lolli and dadndave and family at Stansted at the end of that August 2008 trip. More of an “au revoir” really as Lolli was keen to come back and walk the Snowdonian mountains with me again. So, early in April 2009 Lolli did indeed return and after meeting at Heathrow Airport we headed off to Beddgelert. A lovely village where I had found the Bistro was a superb place to base myself for what had become frequent visits to the area.

The Bistro has just three rooms for B&B, and they were all full for our planned four night stay. But they had booked us into a small stone cottage just up the road: and ideal place to base ourselves for three days of hard walking. Being close to the Bistro also meant we would breakfast there, (full cooked English style every morning!), and enjoy their lovely evening meals.

August 14, 2009: Camp 8 had been established at 2750m (9000ft) elevation on the highest plateau of the Kitchi Icefield, just far enough from the massive Southwest wall so the rocks that often crash down the mountain wouldn’t obliterate the tent. I crawled out before breakfast to go crap. Being a conscientious mountaineer, I walked in blowing snow for five minutes to do my business under rocks. After I was done, I turned around and a whiteout fog had made the campsite vanish, and my tracks were obliterated! I advanced into the white void, vaguely going upwind while hard snow crystals whipped into my eyes. When I was sure that I had gone too far, I retraced my steps back to the rocks. “You idiot, you should have brought the compass!” I tried another direction, then another, until finally a faint shape materialized on the fourth wandering. PHEW! Back to the castle.