Podcasts by The Cutting Edge
The Cutting Edge presents in-depth interviews with the world's best climbers, just back from great new climbs. Presented by Hilleberg the Tentmaker (http://hilleberg.com), with additional support from LOWA, Polartec and Gnarly Nutrition. This podcast is produced by the editors of the American Alpine Journal.
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First Ascent of the Southeast Ridge of Annapurna III from 2021-11-29T19:31:53
On November 6, three Ukrainian climbers—Nikita Balabanov, Mikhail “Misha” Fomin, and Viacheslav "Slava" Polezhaiko—summited Annapurna III by the southeast ridge. This towering ridge line, following...
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Archil Badriashvili: From Georgia to the Hindu Kush from 2021-10-31T13:56:47
Archil Badriashvili has completed a number of wild new routes in Nepal in recent years, and this fall, the 31-year-old from Georgia and regular partners Giorgi Tepnadze and Baqar Gelashvili mounted...
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Chantel Astorga: Solo on the Cassin Ridge from 2021-09-28T13:07:36
This year, alpinist Chantel Astorga realized a long-held dream: a solo ascent of the classic Cassin Ridge on Denali, climbing 8,000 vertical feet from the bergschrund to the summit in 14 hours and ...
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Vitaliy Musiyenko: The Goliath Traverse from 2021-08-26T23:23:22
Vitaliy Musiyenko fell in love with California's High Sierra in his early 20s. A decade later, at age 34, he is among the most prolific and accomplished explorers of the Range of Light, having clim...
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Marek Hole?ek: His Greatest Challenge in Over 40 Expeditions from 2021-07-29T21:57:21
Our guest this episode is the Czech climber Marek Hole?ek, among the most successful alpine climbers of the past two decades. Hole?ek has climbed new routes all over the world, from Kyrgyzstan to P...
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Ines Papert on Climbing, Motherhood and Mt. Huntington from 2021-06-28T19:23:52
Ines Papert from Germany accomplished many of her greatest climbs while raising a small child. In this special episode, Sarah Hart interviews Ines about the challenges of combining motherhood with ...
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Surviving the Medusa Face of Mt. Neacola, Alaska from 2021-05-28T19:46:54
In late April, on their third trip to Alaska's remote and forbidding Mt. Neacola, Ryan Driscoll, Justin Guarino, and Nick Aiello-Popeo made the first complete ascent of the north face (a.k.a. the M...
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Maryna Kopteva: Huge Walls with All-Women Teams from 2021-04-28T17:39:15
For more than a decade, Maryna Kopteva has been one of the world’s most accomplished climbers in a demanding style: big-wall first ascents on remote, high, and cold mountains. The Ukrainian woman h...
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Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll: The Moonwalk Traverse from 2021-03-30T12:25:25
Our guest in episode 38 is the globe-trotting adventurer Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll, who in February pulled off a mind-blowing feat of climbing: the first ever south to north traverse of the full F...
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Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold in Rocky Mountain National Park from 2021-02-28T17:00:46
Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold need no introduction. Our show with them about the speed record on the Nose of El Cap (Episode 8) was by far the most popular we've ever done. Now they're back to ch...
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Lynn Hill and the Challenges of Women's Climbing from 2021-01-31T18:50:13
Lynn Hill needs no introduction to the Cutting Edge audience: She is arguably the most ground-breaking female rock climber and big-wall free climber in the history of the sport. We asked Lynn to co...
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Priti and Jeff Wright's Big Year: Cerro Torre, The Alps and K6 Central from 2020-11-18T13:02:54
Priti and Jeff Wright are wrapping up the kind of year that most climbers only dream about. The young tech engineers took a sabbatical from work to experience "A Year in the Life of Colin Haley," i...
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Barry Blanchard, Ethan Berman and Uisdean Hawthorn on Mt. Robson from 2020-10-30T22:18:48
Yuh-hai-has-kun (Mt. Robson) is one of North America's greatest peaks, despite rising to less than 4,000 meters or 13,000 feet. In early October, Ethan Berman (U.S.) and Uisdean Hawthorn (Scotland)...
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Chris Weidner on the Diamond of Longs Peak from 2020-10-14T13:30:22
Chris Weidner and Bruce Miller worked four years on a new free climb up the Diamond, the northeast face of Longs Peak in Colorado. The Gambler's Fallacy (5.13b/8a) is one of the hardest routes up t...
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Nico Favresse and the Alpine Trilogy from 2020-09-22T14:21:32
Nico Favresse from Belgium is well-known as a prolific explorer of new routes and long free ascents around the world: Baffin Island, China, Patagonia, Greenland, and more. But this summer, with COV...
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Brandon Adams and Roger Putnam: New Mescalito Speed Record from 2020-08-29T23:47:47
In early July, Brandon Adams and Roger Putnam set a new speed record for climbing Mescalito, the classic El Cap aid route. In fact, they smashed the previous mark (which had stood for more than two...
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Jacob Cook and Bronwyn Hodgins: Going Big on Baffin Island from 2020-08-13T12:03:22
Jacob Cook and Bronwyn Hodgins, partners in both climbing and marriage, joined two other Canadians last summer in Baffin Island's Weasel River Valley. This remote Arctic region has seen big-wall as...
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Matteo Della Bordella: Free Climbing in India from 2020-06-01T16:44:13
Italian climber Matteo Della Bordella returns to the Cutting Edge to talk about the first ascent of the west face of Bhagirathi IV. This is a very steep 800-meter wall, entirely above 5,000 meters,...
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Tim Emmett and the Wild Ice Climbs of Helmcken Falls from 2020-02-29T23:01:35
The ice climbs of Helmcken Falls in central British Columbia are like no other climbs on Earth. Since 2010, our guest Tim Emmett has been developing "spray ice" climbs at Helmcken, connecting blobs...
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Leo Houlding on the Lost World of Roraima from 2020-01-27T19:01:19
Our guest for this episode is Leo Houlding, one of the great expedition leaders of our time. Leo's goal for this year was a new free route on Roraima, a legendary mountain in South America that is ...
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A Proud Failure: Quentin Roberts on Tengkangpoche from 2019-12-27T20:11:37
The north pillar of 6,487-meter Tengkangpoche in Nepal is one of the great unclimbed prizes of the Himalaya. In October, Quentin Roberts from Canada and Juho Knuuttila from Finland spent six days o...
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Nik Berry, Eric Bissell and Conrad Anker: The Russian Tower from 2019-11-27T16:05:46
In this episode we travel to the Pamir Alai mountains of Kyrgyzstan for a special two-part show. The first part features a conversation with Nik Berry and Eric Bissell, who went to Kyrgyzstan in Au...
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Tom Livingstone: Koyo Zom and the Great Game from 2019-10-31T15:06:09
Koyo Zom in northern Pakistan is nearly 7,000 meters tall, and its stunning north face looks like a massive medieval fortress. No one had climbed or even attempted Koyo Zom for more than 40 years. ...
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Exploring the High Sierra with Vitaliy Musiyenko from 2019-10-03T23:06:33
Vitaliy Musiyenko is the most prolific climber of long new routes in the Sierra in modern history. This summer was no exception, including one line that recently was called "The Rostrum of Sequoia....
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Link Sar with Steve Swenson and Graham Zimmerman from 2019-09-04T11:31:03
At sunset on August 5, 2019, Steve Swenson, Graham Zimmerman, Chris Wright, and Mark Richey stood on top of Link Sar, a 7,041-meter peak in Pakistan that had resisted numerous attempts dating back ...
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Babsi Zangerl's Big-Wall Dreams from 2019-08-22T13:22:26
Thirty-one-year old Barbara "Babsi" Zangerl is one of the world's most accomplished all-around rock climbers. She started climbing at age 14, and early on she focused on bouldering. After herniatin...
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Karl Egloff and the New Denali Speed Record from 2019-07-10T23:05:40
In this episode we’re venturing into the world of FKTs: the Fastest Known Times for mountain ascents, alpine traverses, and similar feats. Our guest is Karl Egloff, a mountain guide who was virtual...
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Luka Lindi? and Ines Papert in Canada from 2019-05-29T00:17:16
In early April 2019, Luka Lindi? and Ines Papert teamed up with Brette Harrington to climb a major new route in the Canadian Rockies: the complete east face of Mt. Fay. Chris Kalman spoke with them...
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Jerome Sullivan on Cerro San Lorenzo from 2019-04-30T20:22:38
In October, Jerome Sullivan and two friends succeeded on the south pillar of Cerro San Lorenzo, perhaps the most difficult unclimbed summit in Patagonia. It was a "terrible" climb, but a truly gran...
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Patagonia Debrief, with Rolando Garibotti and Kelly Cordes (Ep. 17) from 2019-03-31T23:22:37
The Patagonia season has just come to a close, and so we asked the experts, Rolando Garibotti and Kelly Cordes, to go beyond the headlines and talk in depth about a wild new route, a ground-breakin...
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Scott Coldiron's Amazing Discovery (Ep. 16) from 2019-02-26T13:54:24
Scott Coldiron is that rare and lucky climber who gets to discover and develop an entirely new area: the massive ice and mixed climbs of the Cabinet Mountains in Montana. After a few years of under...
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Chris Wright and Graham Zimmerman (Ep. 15) from 2019-01-28T15:09:09
In mid-November, Chris Wright and Graham Zimmerman spent three days on a new route up Mt. Macdonald, high over Rogers Pass in British Columbia. Just getting onto the mountain required years of wait...
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Hilaree Nelson: Skiing Lhotse (Ep. 14) from 2018-12-20T16:25:10
In late September, Hilaree Nelson and Jim Morrison completed the first ski descent of Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain in the world. Their route was the stunning Lhotse Couloir, a plumb line fro...
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Hansjörg Auer's Amazing Solos (Ep. 13) from 2018-11-26T23:38:19
Austrian climber Hansjörg Auer pulled off a rare feat in July: a solo new route on a 7,000-meter peak in the Karakoram. In this episode, Hansjörg talks about his new route on Lupghar Sar West, the ...
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Brette Harrington and the Devil's Paw (Ep. 12) from 2018-10-29T15:30:32
After Brette Harrington's partner, Marc-André Leclerc, disappeared during a climb on Mendenhall Tower in Alaska in March, along with Ryan Johnson, Brette felt compelled to return to the Juneau Icef...
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Latok I: The Second Ascent (Ep. 11) from 2018-09-27T14:03:39
On August 9, four decades years after the first ascent of Latok I in Pakistan, Aleš ?esen and Luka Stražar from Slovenia, along with Tom Livingstone from the U.K., completed the second ascent of th...
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Colin Haley Speed Solos the Cassin Ridge (Ep. 10) from 2018-08-22T14:15:41
In early June, Colin Haley set a new speed record for the Cassin Ridge on North America's highest peak, soloing the 8,000-foot route in a little over eight hours. In this episode, Colin chats with ...
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Anne Gilbert Chase on Denali's Slovak Direct from 2018-07-27T22:53:52
Anne Gilbert Chase and Chantel Astorga made the first all-female ascent of one of Denali's hardest climbs, the Slovak Direct, in June. In this episode, Chris Kalman chats with Anne Gilbert about ho...
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Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell on the Nose (Ep. 8) from 2018-06-26T22:47:38
In early June, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell not only smashed the speed record for climbing the Nose of El Capitan, they also broke the four-minute mile of climbing: the Nose in under two hours. ...
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Kayak to Climb: "Fair Means" in Wild Patagonia (Ep. 7) from 2018-05-28T22:10:44
In February, Matteo Della Bordella from Italy and Silvan Schüpbach from Switzerland did the first ascent of a very remote peak in Patagonia. But what made their adventure truly exceptional was thei...
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An Interview with Marc-André Leclerc (Ep. 6) from 2018-04-26T14:39:49
Marc-André Leclerc died tragically in a climbing accident in Alaska in March, along with Ryan Johnson. Eighteen months earlier, AAJ associate editor Chris Kalman had recorded a long interview with ...
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Jim Donini in Patagonia (Ep. 5) from 2018-03-15T00:06:18
Jim Donini first climbed in Patagonia way back in 1974, and in 1976 he made the first ascent of Torre Egger. Now nearly 75 years old, he's still at it, exploring the wild mountains near his summer ...
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Conrad Anker in Antarctica (Ep. 4) from 2018-02-16T17:52:37
In December, Conrad Anker led a team of North Face athletes to Queen Maud Land, an area of Antarctica filled with spectacular granite spires. In this episode, Conrad describes the big new route he ...
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Stephan Siegrist: Mister Kishtwar (Ep. 3) from 2018-01-15T11:24:31
Swiss climber Stephan Siegrist has visited the Kishtwar area of India five times in the past seven years, making numerous first ascents. In late 2017, he returned to India with Thomas Huber and Jul...
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Alan Rousseau: The First Ascent of Rungofarka (Ep. 2) from 2017-12-15T16:08:19
Until 2010, the spectacular mountains of India's Zanskar Range had been off-limits to climbers for generations. This fall, American climbing guides Alan Rousseau and Tino Villanueva took advantage ...
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Will Stanhope: All the Howser Towers in a Day (Ep. 1) from 2017-11-20T13:51:36
In late August, Will Stanhope and Leo Houlding linked the three biggest faces on the Howser Towers in British Columbia's Bugaboos, climbing them all free in 23 and a half hours. Will had been dream...
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