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The Purists Flush with tech-boom cash and answering to no one, Alpinist chronicles the exploits of a loosely aligned group of climbers known as the Brotherhood, who devote themselves to difficult routes, minimal gear, and big-time pain and suffering. Are these guys just a holier-than-thou elite—or the salvation of mountaineering? By Rob Buchanan
Among the juiciest morsels in the Yodel were its editorials—or, rather, manifestos. Despite the relative skimpiness of his climbing résumé, Beckwith didn't hesitate to condemn what he saw as climbing's evils, including the increasing reliance on bolts, or artificial anchors, and other adventure-killing contrivances. Above all, he denounced the drift toward commercial sponsorship and "business climbing." "Who will speak of the integrity and respect and humility that climbers need to practice and defend?" he thundered in the Yodel's first issue. The answer was found at the bottom of the page, where Beckwith affixed his huge, looping, decidedly unhumble signature. "It's pretty interesting the way Christian signs his name," says snowboarder and climber Stephen Koch, nodding with mock solemnity. "There's definitely something going on there. You ought to get one of those handwriting-analyst guys to look into it." Across the table—I'm with Koch and Beckwith in a Jackson restaurant, late at night—Beckwith folds his arms over his chest, looking slightly miffed. But eventually he offers a story. When he left Jackson in 1996 to take his first "real" job, as the youngest-ever editor of The American Alpine Journal, he found himself working with Bradford Washburn, the Harvard-educated cartographer, now 94, who is the American Alpine Club's grayest eminence. Washburn told Beckwith that while he liked everything about him, he wondered about his signature. "‘Young man,'" says Beckwith, imitating Washburn's patrician speech and scowl, "‘it looks like you fancy yourself!'" Beckwith is no longer the editor of The American Alpine Journal. Three years ago, in an episode that startled the insular world of climbing, he abruptly lost his job—a job that, like an appointment to the Supreme Court, was widely regarded as a life-tenure position. But just a few months later he resurfaced at the helm of a most unlikely climbing magazine: Alpinist, a glossy quarterly predominantly focused on the sport's most demanding—and perhaps most obscure—subdiscipline. In essence, alpinism is the art of climbing big mountains in good style—in other words, by hard routes and "fair means," with a minimum of gear and support. Slogging up the beaten path on Mount Everest doesn't count, but tackle it Messner style—alone, without oxygen, and by a new route—and you definitely qualify. For Beckwith and his heroes—past demigods like Walter Bonatti and contemporary standouts like Steve House—alpinism sometimes seems to be as much a spiritual challenge as a physical one. "You take the biggest problems and resolve them in the simplest, most aesthetic way possible," he explains. "It's more interesting, more nuanced, more beautiful than any other form of climbing. It's so complex, so dangerous, that it just becomes this paradigm of human potential." Featuring detailed expedition stories, some as long as 10,000 words, and in-depth "mountain profiles" (climbing histories of famously challenging peaks like Patagonia's Fitz Roy and Pakistan's Gasherbrum IV), the two-and-a-half-year-old 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. "Climbing and Rock & Ice—people chuck those things all the time," says climber Kelly Cordes, referring to the two most established American climbing magazines. "But nobody is chucking their Alpinists—they're too beautiful. They're works of art." Therein lies the magazine's unique appeal, and its dilemma. Alpinist clearly wants to be the bible of mountaineering's hardcore, the men (and sometimes women) who live in their vans and eat sardines with their pitons, and especially the so-called Brotherhood, true believers like House who risk it all on high, stormy faces. Yet its $12.95-an-issue price makes it an extravagant indulgence for the average rock jock—and, with just over 5,000 subscribers, it has yet to be profitable. "My dirtbag friends who are sitting in a tent right now down at Indian Creek might not be able to afford it," acknowledges Beckwith. "But one will buy it and it'll circulate through 20 sets of hands—we hear that all the time." What's kept Alpinist afloat until now is a latter-day Medici named Marc Ewing, an amiable, self-effacing 35-year-old software tycoon and sometime climber. The Chicago-based Ewing, who cofounded Alpinist with Beckwith, has so far sunk more than $1.5 million into the magazine, and though he threatened to back out last summer, he says he's willing to spend more. But at some point, even Medicis run out of patience, and it seems inevitable that Alpinist will either have to make its way in the marketplace or fold. Which, for the magazine's defiantly purist editor, could pose some interesting challenges. "I don't want to do commercial art," Beckwith says. "For me the ideal is something that has no commercial aspect whatsoever."
Contributing editor ROB BUCHANAN wrote about the Blackburn Challenge, an open-water rowing race, in July 2004.
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