Maybe cushy glamping is your speed. Or maybe you prefer backpacking on a trail. Perhaps training and competing in a bike race is your jam. Even if you just want to read about it, a new magazine celebrating outdoor sport, nature and the environment in our region could be for you. Chas Wagner is the editor of Allegheny Sport & Outdoor Magazine, and he spoke with The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple about the concept and its second issue.
Kara Holsopple: My first question is, why a magazine?
Chas Wagner: Because we need physical objects and items in this AI-obsessed digital age we live in. It’s nice to hold onto something. It doesn’t scream back at you. So, a print magazine, it’s important. You can still make digital magazines, but print is just a nice way to consume a long-form story.
Who is your audience for this magazine?
It’s in the name, Sport & Outdoor. It’s the hardcore people who are on the trails and on the water, on their bikes all the time. But we sell it at coffee shops and other places where it is meant to have a cultural affiliation – where you don’t need to be a hardcore environmentalist or cyclist. People who just care about Pittsburgh, Western PA, our region. And if you care about this place, you care about clean water and clean air.
What’s your connection to the outdoors?
I grew up not in what you would think of as a traditional outdoorsy family. My family was huge golfers. That isn’t in the bucket or the lane of hiking, kayaking, or backpacking. But my dad and I always played golf together. We would walk rather than ride the cart.
But I just love sport. I love competition. I love how it brings people together. You’re part of a team, part of a community, and the ritual of it. Then the older I got, I lived in Boston and New England and New York, and I’d actually go to bigger mountains: the Adirondacks, the White Mountains, the Green Mountains. I hung out with friends who were really into hiking and hitting the summit of Mount Washington and bigger mountains than we have here. I just love all different forms of being outside, from forest bathing, where you’re going 30 minutes a mile, to a good 5k where you’re just sprinting along. There are just so many ways to spend your time outside.
Chas Wagner is the editor of Allegheny Sport & Outdoor Magazine.
There are two issues out currently. Tell me about some of the stories featured in the second issue.
Issue one, some of the stories were put together during COVID, and it was a lot of Zoom. This second issue was able to happen more in person. We had a story by one of my favorite writers in this whole area, Ben Moyer, on timber rattlesnakes. We have a story on Marsha Bonta, one of my other favorite writers in all of Pennsylvania. Michael Garrigan is a teacher out in the Susquehanna River Valley. He did an interview, sat down with Marcia, and talked about her books.
Tell me a little bit more about Marsha, because there’s a great spread of photographs of the covers of her books, but also the property that she owns.
University of Pittsburgh Press is Marcia’s publisher. Basically, it’s a series of books called Appalachian seasons. From her farm up the hill in Tyrone, outside of Altoona, she would write a daily journal and log of what it’s like to live on a farm in Appalachia. The beautiful illustrations were reissued covers. I was lucky enough to visit her farm. I was part of the PA Master Naturalist program in 2023. On the drive back to Pittsburgh, we visited her farm, called Plummer’s Hollow. It’s just a gorgeous place. You can tell she just has such passion for the land. It’s a tough, tough way to live.
It’s a great interview about her favorite animals and plants. It’s a real treat to read if you’re a nature lover. There’s also a story called “Bikes in Frackland,” which I thought was a really interesting take on both biking and fracking.
That’s by Nate Ricketts. He has a cycling platform called Curb World. He is originally from Lawrenceville, lived down in Morgantown for a good while, and he is a huge cyclist. He loves road cycling in particular. He talked about that tension between all the fracking that has taken place down there, and how it has really improved the road quality, pavement and everything for road cyclists because the big trucks need clear lines of sight and they can’t have potholes down there. So he writes about this weird tension of how it has made road cycling better, but at a cost to the environment.
Wagner said the first issue of the magazine was put together during COVID, mostly over Zoom.
It’s a really thoughtful piece. What do you think is special about this part of the Allegheny Mountains that you’ve chosen to focus on?
We say Allegheny Sport & Outdoor, it’s a very broad definition. We’ll go and do a story about Cleveland or Eastern Ohio. But just the natural area, I mean, from Pittsburgh right now, we could get down to Ohiopyle in an hour and 15 minutes – one of the best whitewater places in the Eastern United States. We have the Gap Trail right here. We can go from Pittsburgh to D.C. We’re not the Rockies. We don’t have this huge scale of 12,000 and 14,000-foot peaks, but it’s more approachable. I just think recreating and being outdoors is a little more affordable. You hear of people living in Colorado, and that’s all anyone does.
You can sort of ease into it here.
Yes. It’s really meant to be a platform for stories and the people and the places that are making this place great, that have local pride – clean up the trails, clean up waterways. So it’s just trying to reframe what we think of sport and outdoors in this area, celebrating the amateurs and the weekend warriors and people who are doing this – maybe it’s their day jobs, but just their love for the sport or the activity or their trail system or city park or county park.
Chas Wagner is the editor of Allegheny Sport & Outdoor Magazine. Its second issue is out now online and at select locations. The Allegheny Sport & Outdoor Summit is November 7-8, 2025.
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