This winter, Vertical Life leans into a distinctly UK-flavoured issue—sparked by editor Claire Williams’ recent trip and appreciation for the depth, history, and grit of British climbing culture. With summer just around the corner in the UK, now feels like the perfect time to turn our attention north.
We step inside the world of influential UK photographer and editor Ian Smith, whose images have helped shape the visual identity of a generation. There’s a rare look behind the doors of the DMM factory in North Wales, revealing the craftsmanship behind some of the world’s most trusted climbing hardware, and a firsthand account of one of the UK’s sketchiest unofficial via ferrata adventures—complete with rusted ladders, dripping tunnels, and questionable route-finding.
This issue also follows the evolution of Unleashed Climbing, from a garage start-up in Australia to a presence on the World Cup stage, and goes backstage on a deep cave climbing film featuring Steve McClure and Olympian Molly Thompson-Smith.
Closer to home, Queensland finally claims the cover, with a celebration of the Sunshine State’s crags and community—alongside a call to share more stories from across Australia’s often underrepresented regions. We also revisit one of the country’s most elusive testpieces, as Conor White makes the long-awaited second ascent of Shifting Sands (28) at Mt Buffalo, 26 years after Malcolm Matheson’s visionary first ascent.
New voices join the team on this issue, with Lucy Stirling reflecting on fear, identity, and trust in her debut column, and Simon Carter weighing in on the evolving conversation around guidebooks from a publisher’s perspective. We also welcome Sensational Sandbags, a new regular from Tommy Hutchinson.
Elsewhere, Zorba Parer (Arapiles’ resident dirtbag) shares his thoughts on free soloing, while James Hockey delivers big wall tips. We hear from four female climbers operating at the sharp end of 8000m mountaineering, sharing what drives them to the highest places on earth. We also follow Steve Chadwick’s powerful journey from stroke to a 9a goal, alongside the story of an epic rescue mission in Tonsai, Thailand.
All that, plus gear reviews, Rock Revival, cooking, and the regulars—this is a packed winter issue spanning continents, generations, and every corner of the climbing experience.
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VERTICAL LIFE is the leading climbing magazine in Australia & New Zealand. Here at Vertical Life we love climbing and everything else that goes with life on the walls! Be it beanied bouldering, clip-up sportclimbing, old-school daddy-tradding, big-wall suffering, alpine extremism, spandex-clad competition climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering, slack-lining, desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures buildering, and more – if it involves monkey business we will cover it.