Intermission: The 50,000 Ft View

Climbing Gold

From our co-creators at the Dirtbag Diaries, we're sharing a story about a type of climbing that we haven’t touched on in this series: Alpinism. In the summer of 2019, Steve Swenson, Mark Richey, Graham Zimmerman, and Chris Wright, made the first ascent of Link Sar, a 7,041 meter peak in the Karakoram. Steve, who’s been climbing for over 50 years, had attempted the peak two other times. This time, he returned with a multi-generational team, continuing to break a different kind of trail for younger climbers to follow. "When I think about it, I'm not happy because I got to the top of some point on the planet," says Steve. "I'm happy because of all the things we had to do to get there."