Finally, I got to write about rock climbing in Alaska

I recently had the opportunity to write about Alaskan climbing and the people who quietly shape it, a project that felt less like reporting and more like paying closer attention to a place I’ve long considered home.

Climbing in Alaska is often framed as extreme or intimidating, but that’s truly only a small corner of it. 

More than anything, it’s an exercise in patience and improvisation. Seasons are short. Approaches are long. Information is scarce. Routes don’t always look the way you expect them to, and neither does success. Making things work, whether that means bushwhacking through alder, scrubbing moss from rickety rock, or learning when to turn around, is part of the ethos here.

That ethos is not built by big objectives or headline-worthy ascents, but by people who show up consistently and quietly. People who replace old hardware without fanfare. Who write down what they find so others don’t have to start from scratch. Who teach, mentor, and make space for newcomers in a landscape that doesn’t always feel welcoming. 

The story appears in Alpinist No. 92, and reporting it gave me the chance to slow down and really consider what sustains a loaal climbing community, especially one as spread out and under-documented as Alaska’s. Before guidebooks and online forums, beta here traveled by word of mouth: Sharpie maps on beer boxes, notes scribbled on receipts, and the ever-unreliable “I heard it goes” from someone at the gym. That scrappy lineage still matters.

What struck me most while working on this piece was how much of climbing’s infrastructure is invisible. We tend to celebrate routes and grades, but rarely the hours spent hiking back down in the dark so someone else can finish a climb, or the money and effort poured into replacing bolts that will never carry a name. Access, safety, and continuity don’t just happen, they’re built, maintained, and shared.

Kelsey!

Writing about Alaskan climbing also reminded me how deeply place shapes perspective. When you spend enough time hiking, bushwhacking, waiting out weather, and returning again and again to the same rock, your relationship to that place changes. It becomes less about conquering something and more about learning how to move within it. 

This piece was an honor to work on, not because it tells a dramatic story, but because it reflects a reality that often goes unnoticed. Alaska’s climbing community is small, committed, and generous. Its history is still being written, not just in guidebooks or magazines, but in the everyday choices climbers make to look out for one another and for the places they love.

I’m grateful for the chance to help tell that story.

You can read the piece in Alpinist No. 92 here:https://www.alpinist.com