Last night I had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation by, what history will show, one of the greatest mountaineers in American climbing. Steve House, along with his longtime friend Vince Anderson, completed a spectacular new route up the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat in Northeastern Pakistan. Long considered the largest face on Earth, the Rupal Face consists of 15,000 feet of vertical relief from base to summit. Steve and Vince's climb has raised the bar for alpine adventurers around the globe and his slideshow would inspire anyone to get into shape and explore outdoors.

For those of you who may not know who Steve House is, he is based from Mazama, Washington a small town just east of the renown North Cascades National Park. It is in the National Park that Steve spends most of his time climbing and training when he is not traveling. He has climbed what many consider some of the hardest mountains in world using a style that is very uncharacteristic of those mountains. Believing strongly in the ethics of "Leave No Trace", both Steve and Vince did the new route on the Rupal Face in Alpine Style.

One of the things that stuck out in my mind with the style of their Ascent was the fact that on the descent they found a lot of remnants of a previous expedition. A Korean team had completed the second ascent of the Rupal Face just a few month prior to Steve and Vince's arrival. This team of climbers tackled the difficulties in what has become known as "Siege Tactics", where fixed lines where progressively placed higher and higher on the face along with supply camps in between. When Steve and Vince came across this leftover "trash", instead of using it to speed their descent they choose to ignore them.

It is the ethics of Steve House's climbing style that has really set him apart from the rest of the climbing community. His choice to adopt the style pioneered by such great alpinists such as Walter Bonatti and Reinhold Messner has pushed the limits again in what seems possible, as did his predecessors. It is understandable then when he was so disgusted at last years Piolet D'or award being given to a "siege" effort on the North Wall of Jannu by a Russian team. Cheers for you Steve for standing you ground.