Annals of Achievement–Golden Piton: After months of arm wrestling, flying invective, and heated office debate, Climbing magazine’s editorial honchos have settled on their annual list of Golden Piton recipients. The Golden Pitons are entirely subjective, but they go to climbers across the entire range of climbing disciplines–from bouldering to high altitude mountaineering–who put up new routes, or knock off suicidally difficult lines with style, athleticism, and creativity. Click on the above link, and then on any of the faces staring out at you and you will read a catalogue of monster climbing feats. Patrick Berhault, who died last week, is there with Philippe Magnin for blazing through 16 of the most difficult routes on Mont Blanc…in winter. “Any self-respecting alpine climber would be happy to do half of those routes in his lifetime,” says American alpinist Mark Twight, who spent six years in Chamonix. “Americans just don’t realize how much better the European climbers are than us.”

You’ll also find the Benegas twins, Willie and Damian, who clawed their way up an unclimbed ice ribbon on the North Buttress of Nuptse (7861 meters). They climbed without a tent and hacked sleeping ledges into the ice every night, and crawled into sleeping bags that were frozen stiff. After six days they were low on food and fuel, and facing more snow and wind. They didn’t haven’t enough screws and anchors to rappel back down the 40-plus pitches, and 4,000 feet they had just climbed, so the only way out was up and over the top. Suddenly a brief break and the weather revealed the top of the buttress, and the two brothers sucked it up and knocked the bastard off. The twins had tough competition for the Golden Piton from Russian mad dogs Valeri Babanov and Yuri Koshelenko (now on the Everest North Face climb), who mastered Nuptse’s often attempted but never topped East Summit. It was an incredible climb, but the Russians lost style points because they couldn’t resist taking advantage of some fixed ropes early in the climb, left by a previously failed attempt. You have to climb pure to get a Golden Piton.

Or you could check out Ines Papert, a 29-year old German who mastered a mixed route near Courmayeur, Italy, known as Mission Impossible that two years ago was believed to be the hardest climb in the world. Papert almost nailed the climb sight unseen the first time she hit it, but fell near the final curtain of ice and went back for a –successful–second try.

I could go on, because the stories are incredible. But read them yourself. I can’t do justice to them in a short space…



Human Fly Ines Papert: “Pitons? I don’t need no stinking pitons….”

(Photo: Rainer Eder)