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. …
“If this climb doesn’t blow you away, nothing will,” James ventured as he hit the brakes. “I still can’t believe that Earl and I did it.” We hopped out of the Youth Challenge Bus and ambled over to the abrupt rim of a dark abyss at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River. Never in…
Luke Mehall reads his essay “Creeksgiving” originally published in The Alpinist, issue 48. Our sponsors for Season 7: Kilter: http://settercloset.com (email holds@kiltergrips.com for more information) Osprey: https://www.osprey.com/ Scarpa. Use this link to shop Scarpa products, and The Zine will get a portion of the sale: https://alnk.to/3ye6GT2 Subscribe/ score some books/clothes/stickers: https://shop.climbingzine.com/ Photo of Uncle Samson and Tim Foulkes…
Dearest Luke, I have been meaning to write to you for some time, but I have Zine 23 fresh on my mind and some spare time, so here it goes. I don’t even know where to begin with this. My name is Tavish, and I’m a twenty-three-year-old climber from Seattle. I managed to end up…
No place soaks up sun like the Johnny Cat enclave at the Cat Wall, Indian Creek. The maroon cliffs are striped with perfect cleaved fissures, like vertical gateways into a hidden world. The desert heat can be oppressive, but in late autumn, the low golden rays cast long shadows over the walls. by Luke Mehall…
Note: this poem is published in Volume 20 of The Zine. Photo by the author. we take climbing as medicine: you insist, but your pill bottles shrink four… three… two and you’re gone lost as the gear we bailed on during solemn retreat after groveling, questing up & up & up until our callused hands…
I started this painting over a year ago after seeing a beautiful sunrise over the North Six-Shooter. It was a quiet morning at camp as folks roused from tents and vehicles, sand lodged in their eyes and deep under their fingernails. I started hot water for coffee, let Izzy, my dog, out of the van,…
The night was cold, and where the moon and stars shone around patches of clouds, they were incredibly bright. There was no ambient light out here. I was standing on a half-finished patio attached to a half-finished house in an otherwise empty summer-herding village. It was early March, months before the village would be occupied.…