Alpinist is a quarterly publication with great photos devoted to serious mountain climbing. The office is in Jackson, Wyoming. The editor is Christian Beckwith, both climber and writer. There are detailed articles on expeditions and major mountain profiles. Some features are over 10,000 words. It is now over two years old and about to produce issue 11. I was introduced to it by my daughter, Katie, who works there as a copy editor and translator. She translates submissions by French climbers. Katie also rock and ice climbs. She writes stories based on climbing that have appeared in several publications. When she was much younger, we spent many weekends hiking in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. She has a story coming out in Alpinist 11.
The publication aims for quality writing, as well as to promote the more pure forms of mountaineering. There was a feature on it in the March 2005 issue of Outside Magazine, titled, the Purist, by Bob Buchanan. Buchanan writes that Alpinist is “a throwback to a simpler era, one in which readers actually had time to read. Its thick, gleaming paper, arresting photos, hyperclean layout, and almost eerie lack of ads make it what magazine pros call a "dream book"—the publishing world's equivalent of a concept car.”
The Outside article provides a detailed story of the founding of Alpinist but the best thing to do is get a copy of Alpinist itself. Subscriptions and back issues are available on the Alpinist Web site. It is truly aesthetic photography book on the beauty of climbing, as well as a vehicle for good writing about the sport. It also has excellent short fiction related to climbing. The issues are ones that you will want to save.
Alpinist 9 includes a profile of Mt. Hunter in Alaska with a history of major climbs with photos and diagrams of routes. There is also a feature on climbing expeditions in Pakistan with a related editorial on the subject. As Beckwidth writes in a well crafted editorial titled, Fear Itself. “To us, the experiences of American teams in Pakistan are important, because only firsthand knowledge of a place, a people, a culture can dispel the ignorance that is a natural bedfellow of fear.” The climbing teams encountered some very wonderful people in northern Pakistan and, of course, the pictures and the climbing accounts are awesome.
Alpinist X profiles the mountain, Ama Dablam, in Nepal. There are also features on Canadian rock climbing, some important new climbs in 2004, and long, fully illustrated article by Steve House, a well known climber, on his experiences on some unclimbed peaks in the Himalayas. I am looking forward to issue 11, out June 1.
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Posted by: Ganesh Neupane | October 31, 2005 at 10:57 AM