Climbing magazines

Very nearly 20 yrs worth of climbing mags

I had reason today to defend some critical comments that I made online about one of the British climbing magazines. I have nothing but respect for the person who was questioning me, which of course means you do your best to explain yourself as clearly and fairly as possible. And it was in doing this that I realised how important a part of my 'climbing life' magazines have been. For me climbing magazines have never been ephemeral - to be chucked out with the recycling like the daily paper. They are more like journals that you go back to every once in while and re-read the best articles.

The now defunct and sadly missed On The Edge - the gobby upstart of British climbing culture

I bought my first magazines whilst I was still at school and knew no climbers and very little about where people went climbing. Reading the magazines was a window onto new world that I wanted to live in. At the height of my 'addiction' I bought all three of the British magazines available at the time, and read them cover to cover. I wasn't really interested in the results of the Northern under-16 boys bouldering championship or the access agreement for a crag at the other end of the country from where I lived, but I would still read about them.

OTE's successor, Climb magazine, big, glossy and with great pictures and a spacious layout

But slowly things change. I stopped subscribing to Climber in 2006, it wasn't a bad magazine I had just been reading it for so long I felt I was just reading the same articles again - a problem for any magazine. It was okay though because Climb was the new kid on the block, the successor to OTE and High. Climb is great except for sometimes the quality of the copy editing, and that is what I have been critical about.

Climber and Hillwalker (as it was then) from March 1989 and April 1990, the first climbing magazines I bought.

It was pictures in the climbing magazines, particularly the ones below, from those very first mags that I owned, that pretty much led to me moving to Scotland when I was old enough to leave home. Scottish winter climbing just seemed like the most exciting thing in world (it can be as well, although not always in good way!), and I wanted to do what I saw in the photos.

Deep Cut Chimney on Hells Lum, 80s-stylee

The schist revolution begins - Incubator on the Cobbler

Climbing magazines, like much of the rest of the print media, are going through hard times with advertising being competed for by new online sources whilst their news function is threatened by websites that can update instantaneously. Mark Reeves, another UKC regular, has written a provocative piece about this on his blog that you can read here. It was really sad that Alpinist, a particularly fine magazine from the US with an excellent website, became one of the first victims of the credit crunch in the outdoors business sector. I hope other magazines don't go the same way.