There’s never been a magazine dedicated to ice climbing, mixed, and drytooling. Until now.
What’s odd is, there’s never been a magazine for ice climbing, mixed, and drytooling. The bastard children of the climbing world, these disciplines have been historically met with scant coverage and positioned as secondary to the likes of alpinism and mountaineering. A mere training tool. A seasonal sensation.
Sounds like how sport climbing and bouldering were first received. (Look at me now).
Too bad tool climbing is fun as hell. And uniquely its own.
So, we’re carving out our own space to celebrate the community and culture of ice climbing, drytooling, mixed and competition ice.
Introducing Ice Ice Beta’s, The Cooler
A community-supported online magazine for our ephemeral pursuits.
In these pages, you’ll find storytelling, essays, in-depth gear reviews, photojournalism, and art. What you won’t get is best of lists, hollow first impressions masquerading as gear reviews, advertorials, and a ticker tape of the latest, greatest, hardest sends.
We’re going to share stories from the source and reportage that explores climbing through different angles. Yes, there will be plenty of adventure, but climbing is about more than climbing and we’ll also look at the sport through non-traditional lenses such as philosophy, architecture, travel, fashion, food, and more. (Really, it's up to you, writers, so be creative).
To borrow from William Morris, we want nothing in the magazine that we do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
Why online?
Let's be frank: Print is expensive as hell. We're starting grassroots.
Our goal is to eventually produce a print magazine, though, and you can help.
If we can get to 2,000 members over the next year, we'll make a twice-a-year print mag.
Will you become a member today?
You can support the podcast and online magazine for just $5 a month.
Here's where the money will go:
- 50 members: We're covering most of our expenses for the podcast and online magazine (website service, podcast hosting, editing software, tools like Canva, Buffer, etc.).
- 150 members: We're now fully covering expenses (including our audio engineer).
- 250 members: We can start paying contributors a modest amount.
- 500 members: We'll be able to pay contributors more than Climbing.com and Gripped.com do for online pieces.
- 1,000 members: We can pay contributors more than Climbing and Gripped do for print pieces.
- 2,000 members: We're launching a print mag.
With 2,000 members, we can cover the cost of producing two issues a year (I told you, print is expensive) and it shows sponsors that people like us, they really like us (which gets them to open their pocketbook).
If you like how that sounds, join us in celebrating us — an oddball community that climbs on tools on ice, on stone, on plastic, on metal, and sometimes wood, for good measure!
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