Live Your Dream grant winners announced for the Northeast!

Congratulations to the 2012 Live Your Dream grant winners for the Northeast Region!

Erik Eisele: $500
Erik Eisele’s and partner Michael Wejchert’s dream is to push the alpine skills they’ve acquired and honed in the mountains of New England out into the word’s greater ranges. Eisele and Wejchert will live this dream by attempting a new route on Urus Este (5,420 m) in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca.

Sean Yaw: $500
Sean Yaw’s dream is to climb a big route in the mountains, a route that will take multiple days on technical terrain. This summer, before graduate school and a “nine-to-five job with health insurance and two weeks of vacation a year” that he sees inevitably in his future, he will live this dream via an attempt, with partner Bryan Friedrichs, of a route on Broken Tooth (9,050′) in the Alaska Range.

Brian Threlkeld and Paul Clifford: $500
Brian Threlkeld and Paul Clifford share a dream to climb as an efficient team, traveling light and fast on technical alpine rock. They will spend two weeks this summer on the long, remote climbs of the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Range, pushing their alpine rock skills to the next level, both individually and as a team.

Alison Criscitiello: $500
Alison Criscitiello and partner Lauren Peritz both dream of being well-rounded climbers with the skills to be able to travel comfortably in the mountains on technical snow, rock, ice, and mixed terrain. Criscitiello describes herself as a mountaineer comfortable on ice and snow. Peritz, on the other hand, is primarily a rock climber with less experience in the big mountains. Together, they will visit the Little Swtzerland area of the Central Alaska Range and climb the long rock routes off the Pika Glacier that will require their combined skill sets and allow them to both teach and learn from each other.

Note from Grant Committee chairperson and Northeast Regional Coordinator Sarah Garlick:

Our committee consisted of Carolyn Riccardi, Pete Ward, Jack Tracy, Freddie Wilkinson, and Sarah Garlick. Freddie was off in Nepal on an expedition, so he emailed and phoned in his opinions from his tent! We received so many inspiring applications, it was quite difficult to narrow them down to the final grant winners. The committee looked for the applications that distinguished themselves from the others. In the end, the winners held two main things in common: their proposed projects demonstrated a clear progression in their personal climbing experiences, and they also demonstrated that they would help them attain long-held climbing dreams.
The committee would like to congratulate all the grant winners and wish them safe and successful climbing trips. We are looking forward to the next round of Live Your Dream grant applications, deadline September 1. We loved all the alpine climbing applications in the first round, so keep them coming — but please spread the word to your rock climbing friends too! We’d love to see more sport climbing, trad climbing, and bouldering applications! —Sarah Garlick



Yosemite In The Sixties—A Slide Lecture by Glen Denny
Join the New York Section of the American Alpine Club, Monday, May 14

Glen Denny speaks about this magical era of Yosemite, and shows some of his incredible photography from that time.

Explorers Club
46 East 70th St.
New York, NY 10021

Reception : 6-7 p.m.
Talk & Film: 7 p.m.
Admission: $20
Call 212-628-8383 with credit card data
The sheer granite walls of Yosemite Valley have drawn many types of visitors over the decades. But they particularly galvanized a dedicated group of rock climbers, who saw the nearly holdless, glacier-polished faces as the purest form of challenge. The awesome faces of Half Dome and El Capitan were first climbed in the late 1950s, ushering in a new era of rock climbing later known as the Golden Age of Yosemite climbing. During this era, the climbers of the sixties developed the techniques, tools, and philosophies that made Yosemite the most important and influential rock climbing arena in the world.

In the spirit of the social changes of the sixties, a small group of committed climbers dropped out of the mainstream of work and society and took up residence in Camp 4, perfecting their skills and developing a unique social scene. This austere, boulder-strewn campground became the epicenter of the climbing world. In between spectacular feats carried out on the walls, it served both as a launching pad for further adventures and a refuge from them. Here plans were made, teams were formed, and the rest of life was lived. The significance of Camp 4 was recently recognized in its placement on the National Register of Historic Places.

Photographer and filmmaker Glen Denny was one of the denizens of Camp 4 in the sixties. He scaled the big walls of Yosemite Valley with many of the climbing icons of the 1960s, including Warren Harding, Royal Robbins, Tom Frost, Yvon Chouinard, Chuck Pratt, and Layton Kor. Camera in hand, Glen captured both the gritty reality and the sunny optimism of those years on film. This slide lecture, based on his award-winning book, “Yosemite in the Sixties,” gives an insider’s view of the classic ascents and colorful characters of this important era through images, stories, and anecdotes. The show is approximately 70 minutes long, plus Q&A.

Glen Denny’s climbing films have won awards at several film festivals; his photography has appeared in a number of publications, culminating in his 2007 book, “Yosemite in the Sixties,” the source of the photographs in this slide lecture. “Yosemite in the Sixties” has won prizes at the Banff Mountain Book Festival and the National Outdoor Book Awards. Glen currently lives in San Francisco.

Payment must accompany reservation. Tickets are secured only when a credit card is provided at the time the reservation is made. Reservations made without a credit card are not secured and tickets will be forfeited by 6:50pm the evening of the lecture.
Reservations are suggested on a first-come, first-served basis. Please call 212-628-8383, Fax 212-228-4449, or email reservations@explorers.org