Hiking & Backpacking

When getting ready for a multi-day adventure, the best way to train is through “back-to-back” weekend outings. Carry a weighted pack, two days in a row, while training and your backpacking, climbing, scrambling or sea kayaking adventures will be that much more comfortable, so you can focus on the scenery rather than your muscles. Read more…

Like my first love, I’ll never forget my first grizzly bear encounter. It was highly emotional and intense. Short-lived too, but forever etched into my mind. But unlike my first love, I wish to continue my relationship with grizzly bears into the future. Read more…

Foothills Branch brings you another fascinating photo journey with prolific traveler and guidebook author Craig Romano! Read more…

With winter here, and snow in the mountains, your land-based training for the should include strengthening exercises for the quadriceps, particularly if your plans call for snow fun like skiing, snowboarding, or snowshoeing. Read more…

Sheri Goodwin, a certified personal trainer and veteran of trekking adventures all around the Northwest and overseas, now runs a business focusing on helping others succeed in similar life-changing hiking and trekking journeys.     Read more…

This free evening workshop offers participants individualized hands-on learning for activity leaders about how to use the Mountaineers website to list activities and courses, manage rosters, and communicate with activity/course participants, and any other website skills that participants wish to learn about. Bring your laptop or tablet if you have one (you can also share someone else's or follow along with demonstrations on the screen). Read more…

“I didn't know how living outdoors and sleeping on the ground in a tent each night and walking alone through the wilderness all day almost every day had come to feel like my normal life, but it had. It was the idea of not doing it that scared me.” Read more…

Join long-time Mountaineers trip leader Royce Poetter for a five-day getaway in Maui's Haleakala National Park next March. Read more…

Join trip leader and long-time world traveler Patti Polinsky for a potpourri of life-list experiences! This trip promises lots of sun and spectacular scenery with few tourists. Read more…

Join us October  16 at the Newport Way Library at 6pm for our new  Hike and Backpack Leader Seminar. Read more…

Craig Miller, veteran of decades leading fun and successful private and Mountaineers adventures in the Himalaya, still has room on two upcoming Global Adventures in the Everest region of Nepal! Don't miss out on this opportunity to see the world's tallest peak and experience the visual and cultural richness of this part of Nepal, with someone who really knows the area. Read more…

Long-time winter sports expert and Global Adventure leader Patti Polinsky will be holding an info night on Sept. 29 to talk about a lodge-to-lodge ski-snowshoe adventure in Maine and a skiing-walking adventure in French and Austrian resorts that she's leading in 2015. Read more…

Join us for the Tacoma Hiking & Backpacking Committee Fall Potluck! Read more…

On August 10, 2014, Mountaineer Joe "String Bean" McConaughy reached the Canadian border and completed a historic effort: thru-hiking the full 2,600 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexican border to the Canadian border in just 53 days and six hours. He averaged 51 miles a day on the PCT. He broke the "assisted hike" PCT speed record, set just one year earlier, by an astonishing six days and two hours. As recently as 2011, the PCT speed-hike record was 64 days. Read more…

Attendees of our Leader Seminar will learn what it means to lead a Mountaineers hike or backpack, how to prepare and lead your participants in a safe and enjoyable outing, and how to handle some common on-trail leadership challenges, as well as how to post a hike or backpack and a post-trip activity report. This course will get you started towards becoming a trip leader for the Seattle and Foothills Branches. Read more…

This month we spoke with Nina Crampton, a volunteer leader who enjoys teaching almost as much a good beer after a long day in the mountains. For extra entertainment, read her interview with a British accent – she’s from the UK! Read more…