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Crowbars, anger, and new routes, from The Desert by Luke Mehall
Sep 9 • 107 Views • “I’m not saying I’m going to rule the world, or I’m going to change the world, but I guarantee you that I will spark...
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One of the greatest joys I have as a publisher is discovering an amazing climbing project, and then...
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The Salajeet Collectors by Amanda Forrest
This story starts and ends with a chicken. On a bright morning in a high valley of the Hindu Kush,...
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Just A Climber, For Bears Ears (a short film)
Just A Climber (For Bears Ears) is the result of 20 years of thinking and recreating in Indian...
Inspiration Station Inspiration Station
One of the greatest joys I have as a publisher is discovering an amazing climbing project, and then being able to share that with our...
The Salajeet Collectors by Amanda Forrest
This story starts and ends with a chicken. On a bright morning in a high valley of the Hindu Kush, the doomed bird lay pinned atop a low...
Just A Climber, For Bears Ears (a short film)
Just A Climber (For Bears Ears) is the result of 20 years of thinking and recreating in Indian Creek. When the new protections are...
Biophilia On The Rocks by Birch Malotky
June’s humid breath settles in waves over the Mount Washington Valley as the sun dips low in the west. A shadow Cathedral Ledge pools at...
Ray’s Red Truck by Roy McClenahan
In the rich caravan of climbers whom we meet at the crags, people come and go. Some, like the flowing of mountain streams, make a daily...
A Journey Through Time by Adam Ferro
The expenditure of energy on a trip of this sort is massive and one only has so much of this energy. Energy that is accumulated as a person...
Replacing The Seamstress Corner with Dave Marcinowski by Luke Mehall
There are climbing partners, and there are the climbing partners. The partner you want to climb to the ends of the Earth and back with. The...
The Desert by Luke Mehall, Fall Tour Kicks off in Crested Butte
Fall Tour Kickoff: Thursday, August 15th 7:00 p.m. Townie Books 414 Elk Ave. Crested Butte, Colorado Dear readers, reviewers, promoters,...
Read The Zine – Deals for the Week
We know you’re stoked to “read the zine” so we’re now offering a deal every week. Here’s what we have going...
The Climbing Zine is always accepting stories, photography, and art. Below are our loose guidelines, informal pitches from solid writers...
Jim Bridwell’s Memorial in Yosemite (a photo essay)
When I heard that Jim Bridwell had died, my first thought was, I bet even he didn’t think he’d live this long. Between pushing the...
Events We Support: Get Complimentary Zines for YOUR Event
At The Zine we’ve got a plan. We started out small, really small, and we printed like 100 copies per issue. In 2019 that number will...
Where to Find The Climbing Zine – Independent Outlets
The Climbing Zine and Benighted Publications pride ourselves on independent distribution. Below is a list of our beloved retailers where...
Review: Lowa Alpine Pro GTX (womens)
Usually, just the thought of a new pair of mountaineering boots would make my feet ache, but that is not the case with the Lowa Alpine Pro...
The Giving Bolt, An Ode To The Bolt by Jimmy Keithley
Well here we are, old bolt; let me just say this before I remove you. You should be proud because great care was taken when you were...
The Desert (Mehall’s fifth book)
The Desert, Luke Mehall’s fifth and final book in his “dirtbag climber series” begins a Kickstarter campaign today to...
The Desert and The Dog by Luke Mehall
This is the most beautiful place on Earth, but of course, like Cactus Ed Abbey said, every person carries in their heart an image of the...
Powders of Persuasion by Luke Mehall (from The Desert)
My college years in The Desert were adventurous and crazy, a complete immersion in the unknown. After I graduated, I began to roam from...
The teenage Federale slings his machine gun over his shoulder and bends toward my bag. Cocaine? he asks. Marijuana? I have a stash of weed...
The Long Way Back by Mike Reddy
“Oh you feel and you taste it and you want to go higher. So what do you do? And so you peak into the mountain where your desire goes....
The Painted Wall by Luke Mehall
It is like any other start to a day of climbing in the Black Canyon. Dave and I are up before the sun, throwing down coffee and a quick...
At some point in my early to midtwenties, I came to the conclusion that life is not about rock climbing. There’s just too much other...
Time Continuum of Desert Road Tripping by Kevin Volkening
The Pinnacle of Technology, as we called her drifted through the endless space, the time continuum that is road tripping. Flakes of snow...
A Venture Backward, Inward, and Upward by Rhiannon Williams
In Memory of Towyn Williams (1926 – 2016) I associate much of my childhood with a little white farmhouse in the Welsh countryside. My...
Hayden, I am just so sad that you’re gone. The news struck me like a train. It literally knocked me off my feet. Since then I have felt...
The reflection targets my disfigurement. If only the borders of this mirror could protect the rest of the world from my hideousness. My...
Flirting with The Nose In A Day in The Valley of Stone
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Goerte I grew up in the traditions of...
Kansas City Urban Summits, a buildering adventure by Dakota Walz
I could see him clearly from directly across the alleyway. A light was on and a white balding office worker was clearly burning the...
From Midas’s Touch to A Green Thumb: Remembering Doug Tompkins by Joy Martin
Doug Tompkins opens the door to a South American summer evening. At seventy-one—stooped and shuffling, a button-down shirt tucked into...
Tom Randall: Wide Boy, Small Ego, Big Heart by Luke Mehall
Like most desert rats, I first heard of Tom Randall during his and Pete Whittaker’s infamous off-width tour of the United States in 2011....
Are We Born to Climb? by D Scott Borden
Is climbing as innate as sharing, copulating, greed, or even walking? Many evolutionary biologists would offer that the essence of climbing...
Go To The Desert (a poem) by Luke Mehall
Go to the desert Or whatever place Is The Desert To You by Luke Mehall, photo by: Greg Cairns For me it’s The Desert You know why I...
Effort and Folly on Mount Waddington by Drew Thayer
Humbled The cam lobes slide in the fissure as I test it, useless. This dark, metamorphic rock, tortured entrails of a bygone continent, is...
A memorial toilet is a hard thing to explain. But that’s exactly what my friends were constructing last weekend, a new toilet in the...
Perfectical Prose Perfectical Prose
Finding Protection In Bears Ears by Josh Ewing
“Yucca sandals,” I say to myself. “How’d they do this move in yucca sandals?” The sheer sandstone wall below...
We Didn’t Have Much Time by Joanna Spindler (a poem)
by Joanna Spindler, published in Volume 16, now available. Banner art by Rhiannon Williams We didn’t have much time...
The Desert, fall book tour kickoff in Crested Butte.
From Townie Books in Crested Butte, Luke Mehall and friends tell stories from his books American Climber and The...
Old Becomes New in Indian Creek by Chris Schulte
November is closing in fast, and on this turn around the fireball, we reach a strange and interesting milestone in...
Up (and over) the Pope’s Nose by Josh Smith
“Think we could throw a haul bag out of an airplane? That would make the approach really easy.” Kennan was looking...
Do Not Go Outside To Cry by Kathy Karlo
I see it being used all around me to describe women, often by other women: badass. I have always considered it to have...
On Fear, Climbing, and Depression by Sonya Pevzner
Trigger warning: This article discusses topics of depression, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety. For some, the content may...
The Prince P (in memory of Phil Schaal) by Cyrena Lee
It would have been hard to write about Phil Schaal even if he were still here—here meaning still alive. Alive meaning...
Granite Trinity by Michelle Dedischew
One thousand twenty-seven. One thousand twenty-eight. One thousand twenty-nine. My head is lost in some sort of vortex....
Yucca Ropes: The DIY Ancestral Puebloan Static Line by Len Necefer
In the late 1300s, experts point to drought and other environmental stressors impacting the Puebloan people in the...
Elegant and Brutal by Cristina Marcalow
I. Trapped Kaiser Santa Clara Hospital, June 2018 The haul bag sits, a stuffed pig in the trunk. Cams, nuts, and two...
Going Out To Come Home by Stacy Bare
The night was cold, and where the moon and stars shone around patches of clouds, they were incredibly bright. There was...
Climbing Past War by Stacy Bare
The uninitiated, those who don’t climb, always ask me why I do. I normally begin my response with the statement that...
Suicide and Pirates by Andrew Allport
My father taught me how to climb, just as he taught me how to play guitar and ski—badly, I could say. But that...
Susie and The Gnar by Joshua Smith
Some are blessed by fate With thews and spines of steel, Some work hard and fiercely fight To rise above the common...
Mountaineering Changed My Perspective On Beauty by Rebecca Ross
Most women, at some point in their lives, get discouraged about their appearance because they may not possess the ideal...
The Art of The First Ascent by Luke Mehall
You know you’re getting old when they start replacing the bolts you used for a first ascent. That was my first...
Climbing En Plein Air by Birch Malotky
The dance of renewal, the dance that made the world, was always danced here at the edge of things… —Ursula...
More To Give, The First Solo-Free Single-Day Ascent of El Capitan by Pete Whittaker
Walking up to the base of Freerider, I felt rested, light, but increasingly nervous. Two years ago, I’d never climbed...
Reflections in The Black by Vic Zeilman
The following is Vic Zeilman’s piece “Reflections In The Black”, written for the recently released...
A Culture of Climbing: An Interview with Len Necefer
“I try to pursue my enjoyment with the idea that folks care and love for the land the way I do for my own home. I try...
Just A Climber, For Bears Ears (a short film) by Luke Mehall and Greg Cairns
Greg Cairns and Luke Mehall have finished their second short film together, called “Just a Climber, For Bears...
Icons In Danger and Desert Medicine by Birch Malotky
Joshua Tree National Park is a refuge. I don’t know if I’d decided this by then, sitting folded into the crook of...
A Campfire Tale With The Old Man In The Desert by Stewart M. Green
The sun’s last rays glance across the underside of a cloud-swept November sky as it sets south of the La Sal...
A Narrow Escape on Mt. Kenya by Jason Haas
“Hey, wake up. Wake up!” Brian whispered harshly. “There’s someone out there.” I half opened an eye and...
Luke’s Vignettes by Luke Mehall
“Everybody must give something back / For something they get” —Bob Dylan, “Fourth Time Around” On...
Monster Cracks by Pete Whittaker
Over hundreds of thousands of years, water has trickled, raged, and poured down cracks and creases, winding and weaving...
Hidden Dragons by Chris Schulte
I started climbing in Durango, Colorado, a small and isolated burg on the edge of the desert and the mountains, pushing...
Pain and Perseverance: Linking Sixteen Towers in a Day by Matt Pickren
“If you just stop for a second, I can show you there’s no road out there!” Ben said. “I know there’s a road...
Fall on Rock by George Perkins
I clipped her to the anchor, untied her knot, and pulled the rope through the gear. “I need more time.” Jessica...
The Joy Pendulum, Swinging High and Low in Yosemite Valley by Lauren DeLaunay
As I listened to my boyfriend make his tenth phone call of the hour, I absentmindedly stirred vegetables and reflected...
Gray and white clouds rack up in billowed folds like the belly scales of a snake and curl widely across the winded and...
Where The Winds Hit Heavy by Matt Spohn
The granite escarpments of Castle Crags silhouetted the western skyway, massive gargoyles hunched and staring. I...
The Best Crag in America by Eleanor Krause
It’s the beginning of August, 2018. Two months earlier, I’d been fortunate enough to be working for a prestigious...
