TopRope.com: The Blessed Event

It started as a joke way on back years ago, let me see, it must have been the fall of 96. A bunch of friends were climbing at enchanted rock in central texas. I started giving one of my climbing partners, Jason, a hard time about how he was pulling such a cool move that he should be on the cover of TopRope Magazine, and the concept was born; a climbing magazine that sought to entertain, amuse and engage all climbers who could overlook a few typos and spelling errors, to get the honest feel of comraderie and good times that come with climbing.

The first issue was about my first real climbing trip to Hueco Tanks. At the time, it was the best climbing experience I had had. I played away writing text and inserting photos my friend had scanned into microsoft word and the end result was about 30 copies of Issue number one where glasses were drawn back on to John Hogge’s face on the cover because the detail was lost when the enlargements were made on the copier.

That was over a year ago and now we are publishing every quarter, contributors have become more plentiful than just Jan Capps and myself. I hope it just snowballs in the future to where TopRope Magazine and TopRope.com become the vessels and the sounding boards of climbers who have more personality than climbing skill, but love the sport as much as anyone.

Thanks for visiting TopRope.com, and please give us feedback and or contributions in the form of stories and letters.

Paul L. Johnson
May 6, 1998