Dear Alpinist: Good Night, and Good Luck
Posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008
Dear 
I’m so sorry to hear that you had to close your doors for good.
Because news travels faster in the outdoor industry than you can say “pro-deal,” I think everyone in Jackson and across the world now knows that you are no more.
Despite some of your difficulties all along the way, I always thought you’d weather through just like Rolo, the climber, on the Torre Traverse.
I’m writing to express my sadness and gratitude. For, it was you that brought me to Jackson Hole! I don’t know if you knew this, but I hadn’t even heard of Jackson Hole, let alone you, until my boyfriend told me I should work for his favorite magazine – “The National Geographic of Climbing.”
After pestering your creative genius editor, Christian Beckwith, for several months, he finally agreed to let me move out there and work for free as an intern. At first my tasks were limited to scanning photos and corresponding with contributors, but by the end of my four months, I was reading copy, convincing retailers to sell you in their stores, helping edit photos and staying in the office until 2 a.m. packaging up magazines and gear.
During my time with you, Alpinist, I also learned how to climb. When not sweating over your pages, I’d hit the Tetons, Lander, the City of Rocks and even Joshua Tree. I went to the Teton Rock Gym and made friends who taught me all about sport, trad, alpine and ice climbing. Through the stories on your pages, you encouraged me to adventure!
Among sentimental ‘biners, slings and a piton, my parting gift was a mint condition original Issue 0, which I gave to my still Alpinist-obsessed boy.
In Jackson Hole, I have had weekly adventures that made me feel alive, I have danced my butt off all night, I have touched the golden granite and the powdery snow of the Tetons. And I have made the best friends of my entire life (at least three of whom also came to Jackson to devote themselves to you).
It all started with you, Alpinist.
Thank you for letting me help put beautiful photographs and gripping, gorgeous stories on your pages. You brought me to Jackson Hole, and became a symbol of all that is possible here and in the remote places of this earth. You artfully told stories with perfectly-crafted sentences, subversive letters, funny last pages, weathered faces and historical grandeur. You captured – in sport and in art – what most of us could only dream of doing.
Your doors may be closed, Alpinist, but you have opened so many for so many. And as I look at the rainbow of Issues on my shelf, the calluses on my hand and the friends around my table, I know I will never forget you.
With much gratitude,
Lauren M. Whaley
OFFICIAL FAREWELL LETTER FROM EDITOR AND FOUNDER CHRISTIAN BECKWITH:
It is with sadness that we announce that Alpinist has closed its doors.
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 acknowledgment 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.
One more metaphor. Alpinist was not a standard route to magazine publishing. It was a new route: a subscriber-based publication, big and bold and beautiful. In 1979, as George Lowe described in Issue 15, he and four partners climbed more than 100 pitches on the north ridge of Latok I only to descend short of the top when one of his partners became ill. Though they failed to reach the summit, Lowe calls it his best climb. Alpinist was our Latok, and you were our partners. This was our best climb. Thanks for joining us on the adventure.
Good luck and good hunting,
Christian Beckwith and the folks at Alpinist
The end of an era for sure. Thanks for 7 years of exceptional quality. Good luck to all of you. The alumnus and contributors of Alpinist are spread far and wide. Also a lesson to everyone who appreciates a good publication. Dig into your pockets and shell out the $50 a year for independent magazines or we’ll all be reading blogs and People magazine.
Jeff, you ARE reading a blog.
Going to miss Alpinist, good job CB.
And thanks for the blog.