Conservation & Advocacy

Conservation & Advocacy

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National Parks Week

Happy National Park Week! This April 16-24 we celebrate National Park Week by about making connections, exploring amazing places, and discovering open spaces in our National Parks. To help you celebrate, the National Park Service is giving you free entry to National Parks this week!   Read more…

Our National Parks - The Next Chapter

How can we ensure the iconic lands “made for you and me” continue to be the gateway for falling in love with and protecting the natural world? Can our national parks be more inviting and better reflect the rich diversity of America? Will they remain world-class destinations? Can our parks become models for sustainability? Read more…

Solace in Mountain Solitude

Every morning I wake to the heaviness of dread and scattered anxiety. Big life-shaking questions bombard me the minute I realize I’ve stopped dreaming. Every effort to create mental order in my overturned life is like opening closet doors only to have the contents of my life spill into a giant mess at my feet. Would I have to move away? Quit my job that I love? Leave the house that I built on eleven acres and leave behind my community and deep relationships in a giant dust-cloud of failure?  Read more…

Public Lands for All - Take Action to Keep our Public Lands Public

Think back to a time when you stood in the middle of an old growth forest or looked out over an expanse of uninterrupted wild country. Didn't it just feel... right? Make you feel small? Make you feel whole? Content? Read more…

Protect the Greenway - Write your Legislators Today

Last spring, we encouraged you to sign a petition supporting a National Heritage Designation for the Mountains to Sound Greenway. Over 3,000 of you lent your voice to this issue - your signature helped double the support for this designation!   Read more…

Secretary Jewell Signs Order Promoting Outdoor Access for Under-Resourced Youth

Today, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell released a Secretary’s Order to decrease barriers for disadvantaged and under-resourced youth to access America’s public lands and waters. Read more…

Comment Period Open for Roads in Nooksack Watershed

The Nooksack Access Travel Management project in Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest seeks to identifying roads to retain, roads that are no longer needed, and roads that need work to stay open. The major roads for recreational users included in this project area are Glacier Creek, Hannegan Pass, Skyline Divide, and Canyon Creek Road.  Read more…

BeWild Speaker Series 2016

The Mountaineers, Mountaineers Books, and adidas outdoor are pleased to present the 2016 BeWild Speaker Series, putting passion and adventure at center stage! This year, we're presenting adventurers who've achieved great things and overcome huge challenges through the outdoors. Come to any one of these talks - or all four - and we guarantee you'll leave inspired to seek adventure, connect with nature, and work to protect the wild places we cherish. Read more…

Olympic National Park and The Mountaineers

Think back to a time when you stood in the middle of an old growth forest or looked out over an expanse of uninterrupted wild country. Didn't it just feel... right? Make you feel small? Make you feel whole? Content? Read more…

The Olympic Peninsula: A Mountaineers Love Story

Our love for the peninsula started early with our members advocating for the establishment of Olympic National Park  in the early 1900s. Our feelings have only become stronger since, and we feel lucky to continue educating, advocating, and providing stewardship opportunities to ensure the greater community falls in love with the Olympics too. Read more…

4th Annual Big Tent Rally Day

On February 3, we joined other members of Washington’s Big Tent Coalition, as well as lifetime Mountaineers members Jim and Diane Whittaker, under a BIG TENT on the capital grounds in Olymipa to celebrate the outdoor recreation economy in Washignton State. As members of the Big Tent Coalition, we understand the importance our role as recreationists - with our boots-on-the-round perspective - as an economic driver for the state, and we use this perspective to advocate for our public lands. Read more…

The end of access? An inside look at the implications of privatizing our national forests.

In the mounting battle to keep public lands in public hands, certain voices have been louder than others. Read more…

Forest Service Expands Permit Season for Enchantments

The beauty of our wild places is what inspires and motivates so many  Mountaineers to get outside. Access to the Pacific Northwest's stunning places is fundamental to our mission. To assure these places remain picturesque for generations to come, we practice and teach responsible, low-impact recreation in all of our volunteer-led trips. To that end, we support the Forest Service’s decision to expand the permitted season for the Enchantments in order  to balance access  with protecting the fragile environment of this special place. Read more…

Creating Space for Outdoor Recreation in the Northwest Forest Plan

The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) governs approximately 24 million acres of public land from Western Washington to Northern California. The plan is now in the early stages of a major revision. Given that outdoor recreation is the number one use of our National Forests and that recreation provides significant economic benefits to gateway communities and our State, we see this as an opportunity to include outdoor recreation as one of the benefits of effective management for public lands where it has previously not been included. Read more…

Stevens Lodge Hosts Climate Change Roundtable with Rep. DelBene

The Mountaineers were honored to host a round table discussion on climate change and the winter recreation economy with Congresswoman DelBene at our Stevens Lodge this past Tuesday. We brought together representatives from the retail, ski and guiding industries, the Forest Service, as well as leaders from local communities, to discuss how our changing environment is impacting our work and how we can collaborate on these issues going forward. We sat by our lodge’s fireplace with snow falling outside and shared how the significantly varied weather patterns of 2014-2015 impacted all of us. Read more…

Conservation Currents | My Land and Water Conservation Fund

Last April, I took Earth Day off to spend the day outdoors with my family. We huffed it up Mt. Si, my longest hike since the birth of our son three months prior. We started hiking when he was about two weeks old, but it was on this hike that he started to really look around and take things in. Mt. Si is such a resource for so many of us in the greater Seattle area: a resource that I appreciated previously as an escape from city living, and appreciate even more as we raise a kid in the city. Access to nature is so critical to all of us. The Land and Water Conservation Fund protected Mt. Si for our use — setting the area aside for conservation and recreation. Read more…

Land & Water Conservation Fund Reauthorized!

We've been talking about the Land and Water Conservation Fund since last spring AND we finally have big news to share: Read more…

WA Department of Natural Resources Recreation Projects

There are two current recreation projects that you can get involved in: planning for recreation in their northwestern forests and a future 20-mile mountain bike trail system near Darrington. Read more…

Empowering Connections

It’s pushing 95 degrees in Portland, and I’m biking home in the uncharacteristic and unforgiving sunshine, squinting even behind my sunglasses. It’s been over 90 all week. Read more…

Is there a zombie in Congress?

As you probably already know, despite significant bipartisan support, Congress let the Land and Water Conservation Fund expire at the end of September. And, even with Fund’s many champions, a bill was recently introduced that would effectively gut the program. Read more…

Thank You Veterans!

At The Mountaineers, we know the power of nature to restore our souls and inspire our spirits. Read more…

The Living Bird: A Foreword by Barbara Kingsolver


I have tried to look away from the birds. I know it’s possible. People can manage their whole lives birdless, or the next thing to it, hearing them only as background music to more important human events. In art and film they are regularly used as interchangeable decorations. When I glance around the movie theater nobody else seems bothered by the European Jackdaw that flits across what is supposed to be North Carolina, for example, or the circling movie eagle that screams with the unmistakable voice of a Red-tailed Hawk. Read more…

Participate in Mount Rainier's Wilderness Stewardship Planning Process

 Perhaps you know that about 98% of Mt. Rainier National Park is designated wilderness: “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man.”  Away from roads and camps, many Mountaineers love to explore and have solitude without the presence of human development. Do you care deeply about how that outstanding wilderness area is managed? Read more…

Re-Roofing the Top of the World

Three Fingers is, quite possibly, the most exceptional Grange Hall style L-4 lookout cabin ever built; it was, most certainly, built in the most impossible location.  Read more…

Why the Antiquities Act is Important to The Mountaineers

Some of our country's most iconic outdoor areas, from San Juans National Monument in Washington State to places like Giant Sequoia and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, are designated through the Antiquities Act. This Act gives the President authority to protect natural, cultural, or scientific features through the creation of a National Monument designation. We're concerned about legislation recently introduced to limit its effectiveness. Read more…

The Wild Edge: A Foreword by Bruce Barcott

This book is about a new way of looking at the world. Read more…

50 Years of Wilderness: the past and future of our protected lands

As Mountaineers, we have accessed and experienced some of the most remote areas of this region. Close your eyes and think about where you were on you favorite or most recent trip outdoors. Chances are this trip brought you to some sort of protected land, quite possibly to a federally designated “Wilderness” area, such as the Olympic Wilderness, the San Juan Wilderness, Mount Rainier National Park, Glacier Peak Wilderness, Boulder River Wilderness and more.  Read more…

Uniting our Collective Voice - Mountaineers and Outdoor Alliance

This August, while backpacking through the Hoover Wilderness in California with my husband and brother-in-law, I ran into a woman about my age. She was headed down the trail in our direction so we hiked together a few miles, chatting about our work, her Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike the previous summer, and our mutual love of solo trips. She was a teacher out on a three-day trip before the school year started back up. I told her about my work with Outdoor Alliance and our efforts to bring together the outdoor recreation community to protect public lands. Read more…

Land & Water Conservation Fund Expired - What's Next?

As many of our Mountaineers members know, the Land & Water Conservation Fund expired at midnight on September 30th. We were disappointed to hear that not only did the fund expire, but Congress members were not even given the opportunity to vote on the bill - which traditionally has bipartisan support. Although this is not great news for our outdoor community, our efforts were not wasted and the fight is not over. Environmentalists, senators, recreationists, and Mountaineers stepped forward in a big way to protect one of the most important conservation programs. Read more…

An Unexpected Path to Conservation

I grew up blind to the American legacy of public lands — an inheritance for all people, regardless of background, language, or creed. I get shivers to think of what my life would be without the rush of climbing mountains in the North Cascades, diving into alpine lakes in the Grand Teton backcountry, or having Elysian Park as a family gathering place for our “Carne Asadas,” our version of a family BBQ. I found my soul in the wild and the heart of my passion within my family in the city of Los Angeles.  Read more…