Kelly Cordes

Kelly Cordes lives in Estes Park, Colorado. After finishing graduate school in 1994, he worked a multitude of dead-end jobs while living in low-rent shacks to pursue his passion for climbing. From 2000 to 2012 he was an editor for the American Alpine Journal. In 2004 he and Josh Wharton made the first ascent of the Azeem Ridge on Pakistan's Great Trango Tower, and in 2007 he and Colin Haley climbed a new line by fair means to the summit of Cerro Torre.