The Climbing Zine is a creative collective fueled by passion, dirt, and rocks.
It’s your mom’s minivan pimped out And only seats two Because if it wasn’t hard enough to live in a van It’s way harder to hook up in one This poem is published in The Climbing Zine Book 2, now available. Banner photo by: Kristen Hughes With a full set of seats in…
Note: this piece is published in Volume 17, and it is an excerpt from his book, The Desert. Both are now available. Now some men will drive to the edges of nothing So they can take a peek at the great abyss Some men avoid love like it was a plague or something So they…
I’ve heard some describe Yosemite as a vortex, and so is the culture that comes with it. I am sucked into soloing like a teen trying their first sip of alcohol. By Alexa Flower, Senior Contributor. This piece is an excerpt from The Climbing Zine Book, now available. Photos courtesy of the author. One afternoon…
“Yucca sandals,” I say to myself. “How’d they do this move in yucca sandals?” The sheer sandstone wall below me plunges five hundred feet to the canyon bottom. To my right, I see a Moki step pecked in the rock eight or nine hundred years before. But the move to get a toe on that…
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 crazy shit happening every day on this beautiful clump of space dust. The older I get, however, the more I realize that climbing is most certainly about life. At the…
A conversation with my brother from another, Greg Pettys. Greg is an original contributor to The Climbing Zine, and though he’s not an obsessive climber, he has the heart of a climber. Greg Pettys’s Substack Luke’s Substack Hip Hop and Climbing Vol. 1 Playlist curated by The Zine Zine links: Support our podcast on Patreon…
Do only writers cry when a writer dies? Do only musicians cry when a guitar player dies? Do only climbers cry when a climber dies? Lately I’ve cried from my eyes when people I don’t know die And lately there’s been a lot of them by Luke Mehall (note: this piece is…
Is climbing as innate as sharing, copulating, greed, or even walking? Many evolutionary biologists would offer that the essence of climbing can be found in our DNA. It is hardwired into us, this desire to be in the vertical world. And beyond that desire, our bodies are built for the physical challenges of climbing. by…