The Mountain Gazette is publishing its 200th issue this fall, with a nod to the magazine’s Colorado roots and a cover designed by an Aspen artist.
The magazine was born in 1966 as the Skier’s Gazette, then reborn a few more times between breaks in publishing. Mike Rogge was the editor who revived it. He bought the remaining publication in 2020 from the previous owner.
“On the bill of sale, he asked me to buy him a Coors Banquet beer,” Rogge recalled. “And so at 8:30 in the morning, I signed a contract, I bought a Coors Banquet beer, and I was the new owner of a storage unit in Boulder, Colorado that contained the rights to publish Mountain Gazette.”
The magazine, which focuses on mountain culture and outdoor adventures, now prints enough copies to serve more than 8,000 readers.
Readers pay 70 dollars a year plus shipping to receive two issues that look like coffee table books.
The digital version is not available. Aspen Public Radio’s Kaya Williams spoke with Rogge over Zoom from his office at Lake Tahoe about the revival and the history of the Mountain Gazette. You can hear the conversation using the “listen” button above, or read a transcript below; this interview has been edited and condensed.
I don’t think Aspen’s value lies in its shops on Main Street, but in the community. I have definitely adopted that ethos into the work we do here at The Gazette.
Mike Rogge editor of Mountain Gazette
Mike Rogge Evidently, I had a plan for January 2020. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, there was nothing that could derail me. And of course, pandemic struck. This gave me the chance to dig deep into the history of the Gazette. And I spent several months here in Tahoe just kind of understanding the ethos — like, what was this magazine about?
A lot of people had asked me, like, “Why didn’t I just start my own thing?” And I’m a big believer of building on legacies, of building on foundations of reusing things that are already there. From there, we released our first issue again, which was the 194th Mountain Gazette.
To my surprise — we printed 1,000 copies, and I remember telling my wife, “We’ll probably have 800 copies in our garage forever” — we sold out in about 45 days. And there was a lot of excitement.
It’s the only time in my life where our readers, who are also obviously our customers, were like, not only did they want to buy the magazine, they’re like, “How can I help? How can I bring this back?”
The excitement I experienced was far beyond anything I ever expected. The magazine continues to grow. It’s growing fast. The people I know feel that things are improving, and this is very important to me.
I’m proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far. But I’d be lying, like 200 has only been out about a week, and I’m already working on 201, the next issue because it’s just how my brain sort of works.
Kaya WilliamsTom Benton is the artist who created this cover for issue 200. Aspen was his home and he worked as an artist. The art work is a leaf of aspen and came from Fat City Gallery run by DJ Watkins. What was the process of selecting that piece for the cover?
Rogge: Mountain Gazette has become this unique community, where a year ago, for issue 198, I was writing about the band Goose — another popular band within Colorado, I think they just sold out Red Rocks twice — and one of the guys there had worked at The Belly Up (in Aspen). I knew him back in my powder days. And he said, “Man, I really think you got to meet my friend, DJ, who runs Fat City Gallery.” And so, yeah, I follow those leads.
DJ and I talked and decided to do a 200-year retrospective because Tom Benton was the first Mountain Gazette cover artist and also handled issue 36. This seemed like a nice way to commemorate some of the contributors that are no longer around.
In that process, we asked if an image could be used for the cover. But we never got a response. We moved on. And we were like, truly uploading our cover image to our printer when we got an email from Fat City Gallery saying, “Yeah, it’s totally fine.” So we canceled our upload, alarming our printer. It was a true, like, “stop the presses” moment.
You know, I’ll tell ya, this magazine has its roots in Colorado. It was created in Colorado. Aspen, Colorado is a major influence. And you know, the green background, the gold leaf — I felt like that subtle tribute to Aspen, Colorado, where really the ethos and the heart and soul of this magazine was formed, felt important to me as we celebrated this milestone.
WilliamsCan you talk a bit more about those Aspen ties that are featured in the magazine?
Rogge: Sure, yeah. I mean, Dick Dorworth (former Aspen Mountain ski school director) did a lot of writing — former U.S. Spider Sabich, a ski racer from Aspen who was coached by the U.S. Ski Team in his youth, is a former friend of Spider Sabich. And for me, 1960s, 1970s Aspen is — you know, I’m very happy to be alive and living in this current, present day, but if I could get in the DeLorean and go with Marty McFly back to the future, I’m pretty sure I’d want to pop into the late ‘60s.
When I look at the old issues of Skier’s Gazette, which is what Mountain Gazette was initially before it switched in ‘72, I see a lot of the heart and soul of what our contributors care about today. You have Sierra Club, and outdoor companies are asking people not to drill anymore in Alaska.
You’ve got the famous, you know, “save Aspen or sell it,” you know, “rename it to ‘Fat City,’ so tourists don’t come.” I mean, you could change a lot of the narratives from the ‘60s and ‘70s into today’s nomenclature. And I believe, I believe that many of the ideas are still relevant today.
Aspen, even though it’s changed so much — and you know, I’ve been privileged in my career to travel to a lot of mountain towns — Aspen has always been a bit left of center. It has always been a unique place. As much as some people would like to make Aspen, the real value is in the people who live there. That’s what I’ve taken from Aspen and incorporated into the work we do at the Gazette.
Aspen is a great example of how we can take a lot from our past. I’m also trying to imitate that.
WilliamsTell me a bit about the conscious decision to not put any of this in a digital format, as so much else is super digital these days. Tell me about the conscious decision not to put this content in digital format, as so many other things are super digital today.
RoggeI remember reading an article about Jack White from The White Stripes launching a vinyl label. Then I remembered thinking it was crazy at the time because touring and streaming are so popular right now. And I think what was cool was he looked at the economics of it, and just said, “Look, I can stream one of my songs 10 million times and make X amount of dollars. Or, I can go into a studio and record an entirely unique album that’s only available in vinyl and sell 10,000 copies and make 10 times the amount of money.”
What would you do if you had 10 times more money? This doesn’t mean I’m in Tahoe, buying boats and private planes. What it means is that we can invest more in our size, in the quality of our paper, in the quality of our content, in our contributors, in our contributor expenses — which as a journalist you know, having a budget to go pursue stories is really tough in this environment.
Then I realized that if someone was going to spend $80 on two magazines a year, I wanted to make sure they felt like the value of what they bought. For me, this is a journalism economic model I can embrace.
Williams: The slogan of Mountain Gazette is “when in doubt, go higher.” What does that mean to you?
I think the original ethos of it was the idea of just like, “if you’re at sea level and things aren’t working out for you, maybe move to a mountain town.” But for me, it’s about stepping up your game and try and just do a little better every day.
If we all worked towards a brighter tomorrow, I believe that it is possible. And so it’s kind of a big grandiose thing for “when in doubt, go higher,” but it’s something that I believe in for sure. Our entire staff also believes in it.
