Rob Gauntlett, a 21-year-old British climber who was a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year for 2008, and climbing partner James Atkinson, also 21 years old, were killed last Friday afternoon, January 9, after a 1,500-foot fall while climbing the classic Gervasutti Couloir on the East Face of 13,937-foot Mont Blanc du Tacul. It’s unknown why the pair, who were roped together, fell but rescuers say they might have been knocked off their feet when a serac or hanging ice block broke off high on the mountain and swept down the couloir. Another scenario is that one slipped, pulling the other climber off his feet. Equipment failure played no part in the tragedy.

Gauntlett, from a long British tradition of adventurers, packed a lot into his remarkable short life. As a teenager he became a skilled mountaineer and, coupled with friend and climbing partner 21-year-old James Hooper, became the youngest Briton to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 2006. Then in 2007 Gauntlett and Hooper began a 14-month adventure from the North Pole to the South Pole, traveling 26,000 miles on non-motorized, human-powered transport including skis, bicycles, and boat through North, Central, and South Americas and across the South Atlantic Ocean. For this feat, National Geographic Adventure Magazine named the pair 2008 Adventurers of the Year.

James Hooper, who was also on the two-week climbing trip to the French Alps, had backed off another route with a less experience partner, citing bad weather that morning. “Then the weather suddenly cleared up,” Hooper told reporters, “but by that time it was too late for us to start our route and we decided to come down. Then Rob and James stayed up there and they were trying to do a big route yesterday morning and fell.”

French rescuers recovered the pair’s camera and gave the developed images to Hooper, who said, “Rob and James looked really, really happy. They are wonderfully happy pictures. Just great. It was warming to see them and has given us all great comfort. They obviously were having a fantastic time and we have to take strength from that.”

Then this last Monday, Hooper told the Telegraph, “Rob and I were both very much of the opinion that you can’t wait around and you have to take every opportunity that you have got. To use a cliché—you could get run over by a bus. You have to make use of every second of your life. And that’s how James lived his life. He made use of every second.” Indeed he did. Rob and James will be missed.

Photograph above: Rob Gauntlett on top of Mount Everest at age 19 in 2006.

Photos courtesy RobGauntlett.com.

The great Norwegian climber, philosopher, and environmentalist Arne Næss died yesterday, January 12, at the age of 96. Ness, who had many climbing adventures in Norway, also led a major expedition in 1950 that made the first ascent of Tirich Mir, a 25,289-foot (7,708-meter) peak in Pakistan’s Hindu Kush mountains and the 33rd highest peak in the world. In 1964 he led another expedition that pioneered another route up the mountain.

Næss was also a noted philosopher and the founder of deep ecology, which is rooted in the basic concept that every living thing—animal and plant—has an equal right to live and flourish. This environmental ethic espoused the protection of planet earth and its environments, ecosystems, and diverse species. As he wrote in an essay coauthored with Petter Mejlænder last year, “We are living on an incredibly beautiful little planet, but our human existence is threatened. If we are to survive we have to learn to think differently. The thinking for the future has to be loyal to nature. It must encompass all humans and all living creatures, because everything alive, in itself, has a value.”

Besides being a deep thinker, Arne Næss practiced what he preached. In 1970 he chained himself with other demonstrators to boulders at Mardalsfossen waterfall at a fjord to protest a proposed dam. The dam was never built. His nephew, also named Arne Næss, was a climber, billionaire, and husband of singer Diane Ross who died in a rappelling accident when his anchor failed while retreating from a cliff in South Africa in 2004.

Photographs above: Arne Næss lecturing below Stetind, Norway’s national mountain. Næss led a 1950 expedition that made the first ascent of Tirich Mir in Pakistan.
Photographs courtesy Frode Jenssen/www.stetind.nu and Pakistan Tourist Board.

Buy Arne Næss’s books:
The Ecology of Wisdom: The Writings of Arne Næss
Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy
Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World

It’s cold. It’s snowing. It’s ice climbing season. Gone are the dog days of summer. Now in the depths of January you strap on crampons and start swinging your ice axes.

There are lots of great places to go ice climbing but one of the best is northern New England and southern Quebec. Check out this gallery of great photographs of New England ice climbing by New Hampshire ice climber Eric McCallister and get psyched to get cold and vertical!

Photo above: Keith McCallister works up Chia Direct at Frankenstein Cliff, New Hampshire.

Photograph © Eric McCallister

Read more about ice climbing:
How to Ice Climb by Craig Luebben
Mixed Climbing by Sean Isaac

Back in August, tragedy struck K2, the world’s second highest mountain, when an avalanche swept down its upper slopes. A climber died, the crucial fixed ropes on the Bottleneck were yanked off, and 17 climbers from around the world were marooned. In the midst of this disaster, one of the worst in mountaineering history, a 34-year-old Sherpa named Pemba Gyalje Sherpa descended the treacherous Bottleneck couloirs at night to Camp IV. He realized that to bivouac above 27,000 feet was sheer folly and certain death with frigid temperatures and a lack of oxygen.

The next day he set back up K2 to rescue his stranded team members. He managed to bring Italian Marco Confortola down to safety then went back up to save his team leader Wilco van Rooijen from the Netherlands, finding him lost and frostbitten. For his extreme heroism under trying extreme circumstances, National Geographic Explorer named Pemba one of their fourteen 2008 Adventurers of the Year. For more about Pemba and K2, read The Savior and the Storm on K2 by Christian DeBenedetti at the Explorer website.

Read more about K2:
K2: 2nd Highest Mountain in the World
Impending Tragedy on K2
At Least 11 Dead on K2
K2: The Real Story in the Belfast Telegraph

Photo above: Pemba Gyalje Sherpa.
Photograph © courtesy Explorers Web