American Alpine Club Podcast

Scott Richards is a 23-year AAC member, and this year he is being recognized for his extensive contributions to the Club with the Heilprin Citation, the AAC’s award honoring our most beloved members and volunteers. In this episode, we take the opportunity to highlight this self-described “regular climber” who also is up to some crazy impressive activities: including running the Leadville 100, major ski-mo events like the Patrouille des Glaciers (or PDG), and getting on classics in Eldo. We cover epics from these badass activities, and his philosophy of creating space for doing the stuff that feeds you. We reminisce on some of his alpine adventures in Alaska, discovering new lines of risk and capacity as you age, and what it means to balance being a multi-sport athlete with being a parent. We also cover why he believes so much in the AAC. Whether it's ski mo, running ultras, or climbing the Bastille for the 100th time, Scott's story is the classic AAC member story: feeding your passion.

**

Your chance to grab your tickets to the AAC Gala is quickly disappearing! Hear from folks like Scott, Lynn Hill, Jimmie Dunn, Piolet D’ Or winner Dane Steadman and the other awardees at the Gala event on October 24th. Ticket sales close on Oct 12. You can learn more at americanalpineclub.org/gala

Lynn Hill is everyone’s climbing hero. And if you were to meet her out at the crag, you’d learn she’s also just simply a fun, kind, and good person to be around. This year, she’s being awarded the AAC President’s Gold Medal, in recognition of her lifelong commitment to climbing and her astonishing career, as well as her mentorship and community role that she has continued to uphold.

In this episode, we discuss a whole slew of things, past and present. We cover why she started to learn French, Italian, & Spanish in order to read about the competitions in the European magazines in the 80s, how she has no interest in being alone on the pedestal of her fame, and how her life maps onto the common climber lifecycle. We discuss the behind-the-scenes stories from her ascent of Queen Line, a three pitch 5.13c/d in Colorado’s Flatirons, which she developed with Sasha DiGiulian; and how she’s adopted and adapted her no-complaints attitude across her climbing life. Finally, Lynn shares some climbing career advice—you won’t want to miss it!! Discover all this and more in this episode with one of climbing’s most beloved living legends.

***

Don’t forget to grab your tickets to the AAC’s Gala this year! Hear from Lynn Hill and the other awardees at the Gala event in October. You can learn more at americanalpineclub.org/gala

Dane Steadman is a rising star in American alpinism, but you wouldn’t know it from his humble, thoughtful attitude. This year, he is being honored with the AAC’s Robert Hicks Bates Award, an accolade that recognizes a young climber who has demonstrated exceptional skill and character in the climbing or mountaineering arts and has outstanding promise for future accomplishment. And Dane really has shown his chops: in 2025, he and his climbing partners Cody Winckler and August Franzen won the Piolet d’Or for their first ascent of Yashkuk Sar. Dane has appeared on The Cutting Edge Podcast twice, once to share about Yashkuk Sar, and another time to elaborate on a first ascent on Huntington—but he has many more tales under his belt, and here at the AAC podcast, we’re lucky enough to get to know him more generally. Today, we dive into Dane’s thoughts on an underrated style of alpinism and how mountain literature has influenced his alpine philosophies. We discuss his recent trip to Peru, and how his repeat of the Fowler/Watts route on Taulliraju in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, with Cody Winkler and Josh Wharton, is an illustration of his recent fascination with the slow and heavy style.

Alison Criscitiello is a little obsessed with drilling ice cores. Whether it's sea ice in polar regions, or cores from high-alpine areas like Mt. Logan, her work allows her to explore the history of climate and map changes in environmental contaminants over time. Alison also just loves moving in the mountains, and is a high-altitude mountaineer who has worked as a climbing ranger in our national parks, and guided expeditions to the Andes, Alaska, and the Himalaya. She led the first all-women’s ascent of Pinnacle Peak (also known as Lingsarmo) in the Indian Himalaya, calling it the “Footsteps of Fanny” Project, after the first ascensionist (and an AAC Founding Member), Fanny Bullock Workman. Criscitiello is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab at University of Alberta, and has received several AAC grants for her mountaineering adventures. This year, Alison is being awarded the AAC’s David Brower Conservation Award for her ice core science. In this episode, Alison shares about how her mountaineering and scientific research converged, how ice core science works and what it reveals, the urgency of drilling these cores now, and the devastation of a “melting event.”

Geoff Powter is this year’s winner of the H. Adams Carter Literary Award, and it’s clear why—mountain literature is the key to his heart. In this episode, we talk with Geoff about his prolific writing career, his search for the distinct Canadian climbing voice, and starting the magazine Polar Circus in order to find a home for it. We cover his earliest discoveries of climbing through mountain stories, and his thirteen years editing the Canadian Alpine Journal, as well as 27 years leading the "Voices of Adventure" interview series at the Banff Mountain Book Festival. Geoff sketches how these formative storytelling experiences have led him to writing several books, including his recent biography of Jim Donini, called "Survival Is Not Assured." We explore the philosophical and psychological heartbeat of climbing stories, and dive into how climbing literature evolved from a tone that was all seriousness and sacredness to embracing profanity and grit. Dive in to hear from one of the most formative voices in mountain literature today.

You can hear more from Geoff, and the other awardees, at the AAC’s Annual Gala. Grab your tickets now at americanalpineclub.org/gala

This year, the AAC’s Accidents Editor Pete Takeda received a 30% increase in climbing related accident reports. In this, our annual Accident Trends episode, we look at the patterns of climbing accidents that happened in 2025, and discuss what these patterns reveal, and what all climbers can learn from them.

From the human factors that influence accidents across disciplines, the emerging prevalence of toprope soloing accidents; the underappreciated danger of getting your knee stuck in an inversion offwidth; or the hidden dangers of a stick clip, to the continued high incidence of lowering accidents, we dive into some of the biggest trends and most poignant examples of accidents to learn from in this year's book, Accidents in North American Climbing 2026.

***

If you’re a Partner level member or above, and opted in to receive Accidents, you’ll be getting your copy in the mail in the next month or two! If you aren’t a member yet, now is the time to take action, so you can get your copy, and dive into the details and learnings captured yearly in ANAC.

This episode is all about bolts. From the nitty gritty of yanking a bad bolt out of the rock at your local sport crag, to the big-picture policies that govern the practice of bolting and rebolting on America’s federal public lands.

For the main part of this episode, we talk about the under-appreciated art of bolt replacement with Ryan Kuehn, one of the leads for the Anchor Replacement Program at the Boulder Climbing Community (BCC), an integral local climbing org for the Front Range of Colorado. We also start the episode with insights from the AAC’s Director of Government Affairs, Byron Harvison, who shares an update on the proposed implementation guidance of the EXPLORE ACT and PARC Act—the historic laws that preserved fixed anchors as appropriate in Wilderness Areas. Bryon explains how the proposed implementation policy, just released and open to public comment, will impact how climbers and LCO’s will place and maintain bolts and other fixed anchors on federal public lands moving forward.

Dive in to get the full picture: from federal policy to a day of local rebolting.

***

We would like to offer clarification on the statement at 15:29 which states that a MRA will be utilized by the BLM for routes which fail the casual use standard.  To be clear, the MRA is to be used when the BLM proposes to prohibit climbing in an area.  The proposed guidance states that a yet-to-be-determined process will be utilized to evaluate those routes that exceed the draft casual use standard.

Sasha DiGiulian has done major ascents on big walls from Madagascar to Brazil to El Cap. She has told the story of these ascents in the American Alpine Journal—and now in the all new American Climbing Journal. With this unique perspective as a contributor to these journals of record, we asked her to weigh in on her history with the AAJ and ACJ, and why documenting climbing’s evolution matters.

We touch on her recent ascent of Platinum Wall, a long 5.13d/8b El Cap climb, (full story on the Cutting Edge Podcast), dive into the overgrown, run-out, cactus-filled pitches of Bravo Les Filles (8b) in Madagascar, discuss what "significant" means in climbing these days, and the art of recognizing your place in climbing history.

***

Inspired by Sasha’s bold, run-out questing on Bravo Les Filles?

Join the Club or renew at any membership level in June, or donate $30 or more, and you can get our limited edition June tee—just use promo code QUEST. One day left!

Because no climbing quest is complete without the AAC.

What can you do if you and your romantic partner constantly bicker at the crag? How do you speak up if your climbing partner has a totally different risk tolerance than you, and you keep getting in way over your head on climbs because of that mismatch? What if one of your climbing partners dropped you, and you can’t quite trust them again? How do you move forward if you’ve witnessed an accident, and nobody seems to be understanding how the trauma continues to live in your mind and body?

We sit down with Dr. Jennifer Dragonette, a Licensed Psychologist, trauma specialist, and Certified Single Pitch Instructor who is a clinical provider for the AAC’s Climbing Grief Fund Directory, to explore these questions through case studies of belaytionships you might find familiar.

Dr. Dragonette leverages her expertise in couples therapy and DBT to illustrate where communication and therapeutic tools can help build stronger climbing partnerships and solve friction. If you’ve ever found yourself in need of a little belaytionship therapy, this epsiode is the place to start!

What percent of climbers THINK they always observe safety practices….vs. actually do? What are the unique risks for indoor climbers? Are climbers even interested in training, and is the training equipment climbers use reflective of what the climbing media loves to yap about? Has who climbers are—the demographic make-up of climbing—changed much in the last 7 years? Do indoor climbers even want to climb outside? What are the most popular disciplines of the sport, indoors and outdoors?

Some answers will surprise you…

AAC partnered with the Climbing Wall Association to help get their 2026 survey out to as many climbers as possible to collect data about climbers who use climbing gyms—their behaviors and interests. In this episode, we sat down with Garnet Moore, Executive Director of the Climbing Wall Association, and chatted about the survey, the report that came out of it, and some of the biggest takeaways from the data. Each nugget we discuss poses the question: what assumptions do we all make about the climbing community, that we should reconsider?