Feathered Friends Blog

Illimani, Ascendant: A Photographer’s Journey to the Highest Peaks in Bolivia

This summer, photographer and Feathered Friends ambassador Christian Murillo traveled to Bolivia to attempt several of its tallest mountains and photograph its glaciated peaks. This trip report tells the story of his adventures there. Words and images by Christian Murillo.  

As our plane touched down at Bolivia’s El Alto International Airport, I felt my skin tingle. At the time, I wasn’t sure if this was caused by altitude or the strikingly beautiful views of the Cordillera Real mountain range.

After spending a couple weeks in La Paz and taking some short backpacking trips in the mountains, my lungs began to acclimate. Finally, it was time to take on Huayna Potosi, one of the most iconic and popular peaks in Bolivia’s Cordillera Real...

 

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“And That’s Just the Way She Goes”: An Alaskan Trip Report

Alec Bergoef and Colten Moore set out on a trip to the Ruth Gorge in Alaska this past April/May 2018. Read about their challenges and overcoming adversity in the trip report below. Words and images by Alec Bergoef.

We’ve been sitting in Talkeetna for a couple days now, waiting for the weather to break so we can fly into the mountains. Just when we are about to give up hope of getting a flight into the gorge that day, Colten’s phone rings. We have been waiting for two days. I am pushing the longboard back up the hill to where his van is parked and he is yelling for me to hurry. I hop in the passenger’s seat and we rush down the road to grab our bags from the bunkhouse and pick up the pizza we had on hold at the pizzeria. Hastily, we grab our personal belongings from the hostel and rush over to the restaurant. When we arrive, our pizzas are ready and we head to the airstrip. We park and I stride happily over to the plane with two piping-hot pizzas to bring to the glacier with us. There are four others waiting, along with a pilot and Jim, the grounds manager for the air taxi service. We make small talk while we wait for our luggage to be loaded on to the plane.

Then it is time for us to board...

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Climbing at the Edge of Nowhere

This post is one of a series highlighting the outdoors experience of Feathered Friends employees. Written by Mandy Godwin. 

The first I learn about his Aconcagua trip, Mike Burns is standing behind the desk at the Feathered Friends flagship Seattle store and holding a sheet of photo slides up to the light. He passes me the loupe, and holding the lens to the page, I see with incredible lucidity an image of him twenty years younger, wearing bright primary colors at high altitude in South America.

 

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One Season, 28 Volcanoes: Two Women Take on the Cascades

This post is one of a series that takes a closer look at the lives of Feathered Friends Ambassadors. Written by Mandy Godwin

Madeline Dunn picks up the phone a few minutes after getting off a plane in Utah. She’s just flown in to meet Kate Carothers, her friend and 2018 Volcano Project climbing partner, in the Wasatch Mountains for a day of spontaneous training. After an entire season of living in different states, planning together but training separately, today marks their first day back in the mountains together—a milestone in the preparation for this summer’s ambitious ski mountaineering project.

 

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In Deep: A Brief Expedition Recap

With a last minute change of plans, alpinists Nick Aiello-Popeo and Justin Guarino embarked last year on an expedition to climb a remote 20,653 foot peak in the Himalaya called Baihali Jot. Words and images by Nick Aiello-Popeo.

Shortly before Justin Guarino and I departed the United States for our first Himalayan expedition, the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) informed us that, due to recent border disputes, we would not be receiving a permit for the mountain we’d studied for almost a year. Justin and I scrambled to find a replacement peak that lay further from the volatile borders of Pakistan and Tibet and – after scouring the American Alpine Journal and Google Earth – settled on a mountain named Baihali Jot (20,653′, 6,295M). To the best of our knowledge, the northern peak of this mountain had been climbed only once, and the southern summit was unclimbed. The lack of information about the peak was extremely alluring.

 

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