As climbing has grown in popularity, the print magazines for climbing dwindled to a set that can pretty much be counted on one hand.

It’s kinda funny, isn’t it?

Look at this list of climbing magazines from 2013 from Weigh My Rack. Even when you take the non-English-language magazines away, that’s a dozen periodicals.

From that list, for me, I miss Urban Climber (I don’t think it was a redundant magazine), Climbing (preferred it in print and before Pocket Outdoor Media took over and put it under Outside Magazine and made it Climbing Online, so it was no longer Climbing Magazine, really), Rock & Ice (no thanks to Pocket Outdoor Media for simplifying the market, yet again), and Ascent. Ascent was a special annual periodical published by a few different magazines, most recently Outside in 2022, but I haven’t heard about it since. Have you?

I also lament these hard copies of magazines because I spend a lot of time on a device for work. And my work communications, calendar, to-do list, phone, notes, banking… everything is facilitated through my damn mobile device. (And I don’t think I am unusual in that regard, am I?) Hard copy has an advantage: Paper doesn’t pop up with a message from one of my kids or a teammate from work. It fosters focus on the article without distractions from other sources. By comparison, I feel like time can be eaten and wasted scrolling looking for news and content that interests me.

Here is all I could find from English language climbing periodicals that aren’t journals. Now, there are a few online magazines that I are worth mentioning, like UK Climbing and Common Climber, but these four are in print:

Alpinist — The award-winning long-form literature quarterly that focuses on alpinism, but excludes sport and competition climbing.

Climbing Zine — This is designed to be the refined messenger magazine, as the name suggests. It might be the most culturally authentic of the publications printing on paper today.

Gripped — The Canadian climbing magazine printing six-times annually and edited by climber and author David Smart. It has great reporting and connects you to the climbers, even if you live in the Toronto area, like David.

Climber — The UK’s in-print climbing magazine prints six times annually, and, like Gripped, covers the world of climbing news and technique.

These four publications are those that haven’t or wouldn’t be sold, amalgamated, gutted, and shutdown. This all happened in 2022, principally to Climbing and Rock & Ice. The new owners didn’t want several publications and didn’t want them competing with each other once they owned them, and often decided that they didn’t care to invest in your market.

I get lean business decision making. I make cuts in my line of work. But I also am keenly aware of unserved and underserved markets. Well, maybe those are better suited for the smaller publishers of Alpinist, Gripped, The Climbing Zine, and Gripped.

If you value these publications, bound with a spine and delivered to your mailbox — the one at the curb or in your lobby — then you should subscribe.

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