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Posted February 14, 2022
In this feature story from The Climbing Life section of Alpinist 76—which is now available on newsstands and in our online store—Brandon Blackburn considers some influences that inspired him to climb and seek self validation through risk and suffering. He writes: "The most significant catalyst for my own shift in perspective on suffering came, as it sometimes does, after an injury."
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Posted January 21, 2022
In this Local Hero story from Alpinist 75 (Autumn 2021), Oh Young-hoon, former editor of Alpinist Korea, memorializes Kim Chang-ho and his philosophy of "being mountaineering."
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Posted December 24, 2021
In this On Belay story from Alpinist 76—which is now on newsstands and available in our online store—our digital editor Derek Franz travels to Yosemite to climb through layers of historical and personal past, and witnesses some history in the making.
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Posted December 20, 2021
In this science fiction story from The Climbing Life section of Alpinist 76—which is now available on newsstands and in our online store—Mailee Hung considers the conundrum of climate change in a short essay. Her narrator declares: "I don't want to go back to the land. I grew up on frenetic cartoons and fake marshmallows in breakfast cereals; I built an academic career on movies and cyborgs. We look, guilty, at our well-heeled boots, wax poetic about the feeling of our hands in dirt, but I don't want to till the soil. The digital is like dreaming, intangible yet inextricably material: heat radiating from our bodies or server stacks. We once were wind-carved, exposed to the elements. It was hard, then, harder than skyscrapers or computer chassis. Will we be glad to have somewhere to retreat to when the waters rise?"
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Posted December 13, 2021
David Smart's book, Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites, received the Boardman-Tasker Award for Mountain Literature in November. The biography was published in 2020 and provided some of the inspiration for Smart's Mountain Profile on the Cima Grande in the Dolomites that was recently published in Alpinist 76. In this feature, an interview with Smart explores topics related to Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites, the Cima Grande profile and Smart's writing and climbing career.
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Posted November 30, 2021
Today we're sharing an excerpt from an award-winning book written by a longtime Alpinist contributor and former intern Chris Kalman and illustrated by Craig Muderlak. "Dammed If You Don't" is Kalman's third book and recently won the Mountain Fiction and Poetry category at the annual Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival. Book competition jury member Pete Takeda wrote: "Kalman's third book asks a very topical question: Can we love a place to death? Kalman answers this question with a spare quality that evokes a bit of James Salter. His portrayal of a lush, pristine Chilean valley is immediate and profound. His writing is peppered with the intimate details that also bring the characters, their foibles, and struggles to life. Their dilemmas soon become our dilemmas. Perhaps the best thing about 'Dammed If You Don't' are the plot twists, building to a final scenario that is plausible, disturbing, and strangely uplifting."
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Posted November 23, 2021
Alpinist 76 is now available on newsstands in our online store. In this Sharp End essay, our editor-in-chief follows in the footsteps of Harvey Manning up real mountains in the Cascades after years of research to write a book about his imaginary peaks. As she climbs the classic South Face of the Tooth, she recounts his descriptions of formative experiences in 1947 that helped inspire his efforts to preserve the land from threats of timber and mining development. Seventy-four years after Manning's ascent, Ives strains her eyes through a haze of smoke to catch a glimpse of the range as Manning may have seen it. She writes: "While I trace more of Harvey's hikes, I also think of what it means to write about beloved and imperiled things: to cross the arched back of a glacier and feel how much it is both living and dying, its meltwater murmuring in hundreds of voices between the blue walls of crevasses. To walk through the green shadows of giant moss-strung trees that, one hot summer day, might burst into flame."
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Posted October 1, 2021
The following eight essays are part of 18 published in Alpinist 75 (Autumn 2021) for "The Many Futures of Alpinism" feature.
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Posted September 27, 2021
"The Future of Alpinism," is the theme of Alpinist 75—which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, including this one by Natalia Martinez and Camilo Rada, titled "Living Maps of Patagonia: Toward a New Future of Exploration." They write: "We decided...to create living maps. These are maps that do not adhere to official names. Instead, we follow a historical approach trying to help restore the heritage of Indigenous people and explorers. We constantly update the maps to record each new ascent, each new encounter and each new adventure. Our aim is to create maps that are not only a miniature of a place's geography, but that convey the feelings the geography evokes as well as the passions of those who have striven to unravel it.... Many of the unclimbed peaks that appear insignificant on sheets of contour lines could present some of the finest alpine challenges of these regions."
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Posted September 26, 2021
"The Future of Alpinism," is the theme of Alpinist 75—which is now on newsstands and in our online store. This special issue includes 18 essays from authors around the globe, along with comments and quotes from many others on the topic. We are sharing eight of these essays online, including this one by James Edward Mills, titled "Climbers of Color Come Full Circle: The Future of Expanded Representation." He writes: "Through our personal initiative, skills and agency, people of color are affirming their roles as leaders in the climbing world. [Philip] Henderson is now organizing the first all-Black American team to attempt the world's highest mountain in 2022. He calls it the Full Circle Everest Expedition.... Each member of this team aims to share their experience to inspire others to follow in their example.... US alpinists of color are also continuing to pursue cutting-edge objectives...."
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