I’m in the back of an orange Skoda Fabia, with the white-and-green license plate that marks us as Palestinians, cruising through the mountains of the West Bank on our way to the crag. I grabbed a Black Diamond bottle opener, which I acquired from the Black Diamond store in Boulder, Colorado, earlier this year, to…
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 am continually amazed and supported by the collectors of The Climbing Zine. Over 15 years of publishing there have been plenty of ups and downs, but the support of the climbing community has always been constant. I am an artist first and a businessperson second, so I’ve learned, and continue to learn lessons, often…
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.…
Walking up to the base of Freerider, I felt rested, light, but increasingly nervous. Two years ago, I’d never climbed a single big wall. Seven months ago, I’d never rope soloed a single pitch of climbing. I’d still never soloed a big wall in any way, shape, or form: aid, free, French free. Yet here…
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the first route at Cave Wall, a story read by Luke Mehall 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…
My father taught me how to climb, just as he taught me how to play guitar and ski—badly, I could say. But that isn’t quite right. Perhaps impatiently or unevenly. As a teacher, he managed to combine a sense of high expectations with a stunning lack of actual instruction. I would follow his skin track…