Early on after I co-founded The Climbing Zine and started attending the Outdoor Retailer trade show I realized it’s easy to get free gear. Companies need us, the media, to get the word out about their products, and they are willing to give out product if you are going to write about it. But, as…
“Spread your legs and trust the rubber,” it’s an old climbing saying, I first heard in Joshua Tree many years ago. We aren’t the first to use it, and probably not even the first to put it on a t-shirt, but what the hell, we figured, some folks might get a laugh out of it.…
“Learning is not a spectator sport.” -unknown I cannot remember the last time I reviewed a book, save for a high school literature class. Alas, I found the review of Snow Travel, written by Mike Zawaski, published by Mountaineer Books in 2012, to be worth the relatively short amount of time it took to brush-up…
I’m sweating in the Colombian sun as I reach for a big flat hold on inverted sandstone. I clip a bolt and move onto a lower angle section. The shenanigans from the previous evening are dripping out of me and onto the red rock below. In a sudden moment of terror and confusion I feel…
A year in the making, our latest zine, Volume 5 “The Dirtbag Issue” is finally available in print. This is our first perfect bound zine, full-color, with some of the best stories around, complimented with high quality photography. While our quality has changed our price didn’t. Order one this week and we’ll ship it to…
As of today Benighted Publications’ first fiction collection is available on Kindle for $0.99. It is titled, “Buildering The Mormon Temple” and the e-book is a collection of four stories, involving buildering, crime, drugs, and climbing. Check out an excerpt from “Trim Season and The Mushroom Wall” here. About us: The Climbing Zine was started in 2010…
The front edge of my helmet drags across the granite as I move my head from side to side. I feel the beads of sweat break loose, falling from my brow and down my face. I try flexing my thighs to wake them from their blood strangled sleep, but to no avail. Matt is stationed…
An excerpt from Luke Mehall’s second book, The Great American Dirtbags. “The world has enough for man’s need, but not enough for man’s greed.” Gandhi Where do we look for hope, for America, the planet, for the human race? The dirtbags. They usually descend from the Middle Class, where they had enough material-wise where their…