David Smart’s life and work seem to intersect with climbing at every turn. He’s a lifelong climber, revered route developer and the editorial director at Gripped Publishing. He’s a founding editor at Gripped Magazine and has been crucial to its success and longevity for more than 25 years.
Smart has published five books, including a biography of Royal Robbins which recently won the Banff Mountain Book Award for climbing literature. He also actively contributes to Alpinist, including his mountain profile on Cima Grande in Alpinist 76 and a recent story on Kodak’s Brownie camera and how it impacted the representation of climbing in the media and beyond.
Smart has developed more than 300 routes in the Canadian Rockies and elsewhere around the world. At age 60, he continues to climb several days a week and revels in the ambiance of his home range.
In this episode, we cover a lot of ground, from his new biography on Royal Robbins to the state of publishing and climbing media to his passion for route development and leaving something behind for others to experience.
Support for this episode of the Alpinist Podcast comes from Osprey.
Alpinist Magazine: Website | Instagram | Facebook
Host: Abbey Collins
Guest: David Smart
Producer + Engineer: Mike Horn
An Enormously Familiar Voice: Chris Kalous
The Calling: Barry Blanchard
To Abandon: Claire Carter
Strange Music: Doug McCarty
Open Heart: Alpinist Digital Editor Derek Franz
The Vertical Humor of Tami Knight
Fire in the South Platte
Climbing Doesn't Change You: Kathy Karlo
A Few Seconds: Whitney Clark
Sisnaajini: Stories from White Shell Mountain
Threshold Shift: Nick Bullock
The Adventure Gap: James Edward Mills
Available Light: Jimmy Chin
Art of Freedom: Bernadette McDonald and Voytek Kurtyka
Stillness and Storms: Mayan Smith-Gobat
In the Bear's Lodge: Voices from Devils Tower
The Climbers: Jim Herrington and Fred Beckey
Mountaineering and Climate Change
Death and Climbing, Part 2
Death and Climbing: David Roberts
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