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Luke Mehall reads “The Dirtbags Aren’t Dead, They’re Just In Mexico” published in the new issue of The Climbing Zine, Volume 25, now available. Photo by Ivan Ioza https://shop.climbingzine.com/ Our sponsors for Season 6:  Kilter: http://settercloset.com (email holds@kiltergrips.com for more information) Scarpa: www.scarpa.com Mountain Project / OnX: https://www.mountainproject.com/ Osprey: https://www.osprey.com/ Black Diamond: https://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/ https://climbingzine.com/the-dirtbags-arent-dead-theyre-just-in-mexico/

I guess you could call it a town. It’s open three or four months per year. Driving east, hues of dark green, azure, and gold flicker along the extended cracks on the windshield. A serpentine road curves through pine forests and atop steep inclines, tracing edges of valleys, the rim of the lake. by Alexa… https://climbingzine.com/old-lady-tuolumne-alexa-flower/

600 pages of The Climbing Zine, including two rare zines (Volume 12 and 13) Score one while you can! Old School Bundle Sale Volumes 12 – 17 + Sticker https://climbingzine.com/old-school-zine-bundle-just-posted-volumes-12-17/

I know he knows. Adam Lawton is proud. In every group of adventurers, there is a leader, and every great leader must be a visionary. Adam dreamed the dreams for the entire crew. He found excitement in little breakthroughs, like the time I got a job dishwashing at Crossroads Cafe in Joshua Tree—he couldn’t have… https://climbingzine.com/silent-partners-luke-mehall/

It’s rare to be told by an editor that you can write whatever you want, but that’s how this essay got started.  Since the seed was planted, the publication with said editor didn’t come to fruition, but I wrote out this piece, and I want to share it.  by Luke Mehall, publisher of The Climbing… https://climbingzine.com/4-20-99-to-infinity-by-luke-mehall/

The teenage Federale slings his machine gun over his shoulder and bends toward my bag. Cocaine? he asks. Marijuana? I have a stash of weed stuffed in an ibuprofen container in the outside zipper of my backpack. No, I say. Josh stands behind me. He doesn’t know about the stash. This? the youth asks. He… https://climbingzine.com/basaseachi-matt-spohn/

https://climbingzine.com/last-zine-thing-of-the-year-saturday-december-28th-at-la-posada-potrero-chico/

We just came across an unexpected find in the Zine storage: a small box of Volume 13s. Now posted up for sale. Score one if you can! RARE ZINE The Climbing Zine Volume 13 https://climbingzine.com/rare-zine-volume-13-just-posted-up-for-sale/

It’s 1981, and I’m 22 years old, about to graduate from college, trying to sort out what happens next. And there’s this guy I really like. He’s good looking, smart, funny, and a rock climber. I confess, I had this thing for rock climbers, especially those with large biceps. by Barbara Noseworthy, published in Volume… https://climbingzine.com/marriage-rocks-barbara-noseworthy/

I’d been driving past this rock, near Hanksville, for years. It’s just begging to be climbed but looked impossible without drilling a ladder of large holes for spikes (rebar? footing stakes?) of some kind. And what kind of fun is that? The “rock” appeared to be too soft to nail, too crumbly to bolt. There… https://climbingzine.com/sugar-daddy-photo-essay-choss-steve-crusher-bartlett/

I was told it must’ve been awful for a person like me to spend the large majority of days locked down in a cell. Every “awful” thing is an opportunity for the spirit to rise above.   Words and art by Isaac Wright, published in Volume 22, now available   The truth is that nature… https://climbingzine.com/drifter-shoots-a-photo-essay-by-isaac-wright/

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… https://climbingzine.com/notes-from-a-climber-during-a-war-by-asia-zughaiar/

by Pat Ament (note the full version of this piece was published in Volume 17, which is now available in print.) Banner photo by the author. Ascetic solitude is difficult. You withdraw from the world to get a clearer glimpse of who you are, what you are doing, and where life is taking you. The… https://climbingzine.com/chuck-pratt-liquid-sunshine-by-pat-ament-part-1/

Me and my higher self, We often would speak Somehow we lost the connection, Might meet at Joshua Tree —Nas, “Nobody”   Banner photo of Hobo Greg by Emmie Snead   My greatest fear as a climber is becoming crusty. Not the good kind of crusty but the bad kind of crusty. The crust that… https://climbingzine.com/the-art-of-being-crusty-by-luke-mehall/

Don’t you put any more stress on yourself It’s one day at a time —Mac Miller, “Circles” Part of me always thought I’d die young. I had this feeling even before I was a climber, long before I took the risks with our lives that we climbers take. It was probably related to the depression… https://climbingzine.com/the-dirtbags-arent-dead-theyre-just-in-mexico-by-luke-mehall-an-excerpt-from-volume-25/

This story starts and ends with a chicken. On a bright morning in a high valley of the Hindu Kush, the doomed bird lay pinned atop a low stone wall that had been built by local goat herders. One sharp birdie eye looked up into the cloudless sky, the heavens a pale blue, the air… https://climbingzine.com/the-salajeet-collectors-by-amanda-forrest/

Over hundreds of thousands of years, water has trickled, raged, and poured down cracks and creases, winding and weaving through rock rugosities, and worn paths through weaknesses to form (what is now known as) Canyonlands. by Pete Whittaker note: this piece appears in The Climbing Zine Book 2, now available After another trip there this… https://climbingzine.com/monster-cracks-by-pete-whittaker/

Dear Kurt,  This is a letter I don’t want to write. Writing is often difficult to get started, but this one is nearly impossible because you are gone, at least in the physical.  It was in the evening of my birthday when I learned that you were presumed dead on Mt. Cook in New Zealand. … https://climbingzine.com/a-letter-to-kurt-blair-by-luke-mehall/

My college years in The Desert were adventurous and crazy, a complete immersion in the unknown. After I graduated, I began to roam from climbing area to climbing area, and The Desert seemed like just another destination on the circuit. It was in that era that the inevitable plateau began for me on that Colorado… https://climbingzine.com/powders-of-persuasion-by-luke-mehall/

I’m here writing this morning because it’s my birthday. For many years, starting in my late 20s, I used to write every morning when I wasn’t out climbing.  That practice came out of the general writing advice that if you want to be a writer, you should write every day. But climbers, well, we’re different.… https://climbingzine.com/we-did-it-the-zine-is-alive-and-other-musings-on-my-46th-birthday-by-luke-mehall/