Enchainment

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Enchainment (presumably a corruption of French enchaînement, "linking") is a mountaineering term which denotes climbing two or more mountains without returning to base camp. Rock climbing two or more routes in this manner is often called a link up.

Climbers may do an enchainment of easy routes as a way of training for a more difficult objective, but some enchainments are a prize in their own right: in 1986 John Bachar and Peter Croft made the first link up of routes on El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite. In 1995 Jean-Christophe Lafaille made a 16 day solo enchainment of ten classic alpine faces, including routes on the Eiger, Monte Rosa, the Matterhorn, and Mont Blanc.