When I pitched the Mountain Gazette a story on swimming naked, I wasn’t quite sure it was a story I even wanted to write. The thought of taking my clothes off for a story made me feel, well, exposed. And I have a complicated relationship with skinny dipping—you’ll have to read the whole story to find out more. But, in the end, I had a lot of fun working on that piece.
I made it a summertime goal to swim (sans suit) in as many alpine lakes and rivers as I could. I went skinny dipping with my mom and my kids and called it work. I swam with friends in a sweet little lake in my own backyard and brought along a talented photographer named Emily Tidwell, who had her own complicated relationship with her own skin but pushed through that as well. I even interviewed naturalists who prefer not to wear clothes and invited me to a naked pizza party in Reno (I politely declined).
The result is a story called Into the Deep End that’s being featured in an upcoming hardcover Mountain Gazette anthology, called Print Ain’t Dead, celebrating 60 years since the magazine’s founding. Pre-orders for the book opens in September 2025, and it’ll release in January 2026.
A bit more about the anthology and the history of Mountain Gazette: In 1966, founding editor Mike Moore launched Skiers’ Gazette, an Aspen, Colorado-based ski culture newspaper. Years later, the title relaunched itself as Mountain Gazette to better encapsulate the mountain culture the magazine had evolved into covering. Print Ain’t Dead features the work of writers who have appeared in all three iterations of Mountain Gazette.
For the first time ever, the archive of Mountain Gazette has been opened. Print Ain’t Dead features the work of past and present contributors of Mountain Gazette, including Edward Abbey, Hunter S. Thompson, George Sibley, Royal Robbins, Ari Schneider, Henrik Harlaut, Barry Corbet, Jeremy Jones, Katie Lee, Sadie Stein, and many many more.
The book features an introduction by Mike Rogge, a Forward by M. John Fayhee, former owner and editor of Mountain Gazette, an original cartoon by Harry Bliss and Steve Martin, and a Jaded Local column exclusive to the book written by Hans Ludwig.