Me and my higher self, We often would speak Somehow we lost the connection, Might meet at Joshua Tree —Nas, “Nobody” Banner photo of Hobo Greg by Emmie Snead My greatest fear as a climber is becoming crusty. Not the good kind of crusty but the bad kind of crusty. The crust that…
Don’t you put any more stress on yourself It’s one day at a time —Mac Miller, “Circles” Part of me always thought I’d die young. I had this feeling even before I was a climber, long before I took the risks with our lives that we climbers take. It was probably related to the depression…
Dear Kurt, This is a letter I don’t want to write. Writing is often difficult to get started, but this one is nearly impossible because you are gone, at least in the physical. It was in the evening of my birthday when I learned that you were presumed dead on Mt. Cook in New Zealand. …
As I listened to my boyfriend make his tenth phone call of the hour, I absentmindedly stirred vegetables and reflected on the events of the past month. Fuck this season, I overheard from the kitchen. Together, we had been stunned by a hero’s suicide and his partner’s avalanche burial, witnessed my mentor’s paralyzing accident, and…
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 stone wall that had been built by local goat herders. One sharp birdie eye looked up into the cloudless sky, the heavens a pale blue, the air…
Over hundreds of thousands of years, water has trickled, raged, and poured down cracks and creases, winding and weaving through rock rugosities, and worn paths through weaknesses to form (what is now known as) Canyonlands. by Pete Whittaker note: this piece appears in The Climbing Zine Book 2, now available After another trip there this…
My college years in The Desert were adventurous and crazy, a complete immersion in the unknown. After I graduated, I began to roam from climbing area to climbing area, and The Desert seemed like just another destination on the circuit. It was in that era that the inevitable plateau began for me on that Colorado…
I’m here writing this morning because it’s my birthday. For many years, starting in my late 20s, I used to write every morning when I wasn’t out climbing. That practice came out of the general writing advice that if you want to be a writer, you should write every day. But climbers, well, we’re different.…