Climbing Culture

This cartoon is based on a memorable descent from Triassic Sands in the Black Velvet Canyon. We were climbing with…

“There’s someone on that off-width you wanted to do.” I pause—midstride—and look up to see someone hanging out halfway…

It’s your mom’s minivan pimped out And only seats two Because if it wasn’t hard enough to live in a…

Milton had overgrowth knots, the greasy kind, matting his beard to his wooly secondhand pullover, which sagged without shape over…

Note: this poem is published in Volume 25. Photo of Anna climbing “Peace” in Tuolumne Meadows, California by Mary Eden. …

Though I’ve been dangling off the cliffs of Yosemite for twenty-plus years now, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with…

This story starts and ends with a chicken. On a bright morning in a high valley of the Hindu Kush,…

And as you journey into outerspace May the angels help to lead the way May the prayers that our families…

My friends are gettin’ older, So I guess I must be too. Without their loving kindness, I don’t know what…

I was told it must’ve been awful for a person like me to spend the large majority of days locked…

The young buck who offers to take us up Time Wave Zero instead drinks twenty-eight Tecates and keeps the hot…

Please join us for the first “Zine Thing” of 2026. Details below. Banner photo of Felipe Garcia by Ivan Iozza,…

I love being challenged by the nature that has been sculpting the rock faces of our planet for many centuries.…

I’d been driving past this rock, near Hanksville, for years. It’s just begging to be climbed but looked impossible without…

How did I end up becoming an off-width climber? I used to absolutely hate off-widths—mostly because I didn’t like the…