We began Alpinist almost seven years ago in a moment of serendipity. What would it be like, we wondered, to create the magazine of our dreams? Twenty-six issues later (if you count Issue 0, which we do, and notwithstanding Issue 13, which we skipped) (sorry about that) we close with heartache, but not without a sense of accomplishment. The critical acknowledgement was welcome: three Maggie Awards, for Best Overall Design, Best Quarterly and Best E-Newsletter; Print magazine’s Regional Design award; a seven-page article in Outside magazine, “The Purists,” about our effect on American climbing. But more important were you, our community of readers, contributors and advertisers. Sometimes we felt this significance in letters you would write; other times, in chance encounters at the City of Rocks, in Squamish parking lots, in Hyalite, on routes here in the Tetons, we felt it when you approached us and expressed your gratitude, your enthusiasm, your stoke. We folded because there weren’t enough of you, but for our nearly 9,000 subscribers, and the countless other readers who picked us up on newsstands and passed us along to their friends, we spent hours, days, weeks, getting everything between our covers just right. We fought to publish Voytek Kurtyka’s “Losar,” Barry Blanchard’s “A Climber’s Tale,” Colin Haley’s “Going Square,” Tommy Caldwell’s “El Capitan.” It was an honor to reproduce Giulio Malfer’s photographs of climbing’s luminaries: from Andrej Stremfelj in Issue 1 to Jonny Woodward in Issue 20, we showcased some of the great climbers of our time. The artwork of Jeremy Collins, Tami Knight, Sean McCabe, Andreas Schmidt; the photographs of Thomas Ulrich, Glen Denny, Monique Dalmasso, Jonathan Scurlock, Andrew Burr: we included all of them according to the William Morris dictum, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” For six and a half years, Alpinist was our house, you were our guests, and we strove to have nothing in our pages that did not fit Morris’ exhortation. When you came up to us and thanked us, we knew you believed so too.
Sad news indeed … I know mountaineers always get made when the stranded ones are called mere hikers in the news reports, but I have seen the look on the face of just one of them dreamily gazing at a tall summit he couldn’t climb that day. Something about that look explains why people want to climb peaks. The look also explains what kept a mag like The Alpinist around for seven years.
Link via Romenesko.
I was pretty heart-broken when I read about this this morning.