Mountaineer Magazine

We’ve all experienced a moment of true fear. Your fingers grow cold and your stomach drops. Time slows while your mind and body prime to react, and all you can think is, “This is actually happening.” Read more…

Reading the journals of many naturalists, outdoorspeople, and adventurers, you immediately feel their strong love for the land. You can sense how this love touched their souls and tantalized their emotions. But what about romantic, familial, or platonic love? Did they experience that too while out and about in the backcountry? Read more…

Sometimes a story asks to be told. As part of my role as Assistant Director of Development, I have the privilege of connecting with members to learn how Mountaineers philanthropy has positively impacted their lives. In last fall’s #GivingTuesday scholarship fundraising effort we introduced 18 year-old scholarship recipient Lily Walker, a five-year member of our year-round teen program, the Tacoma Mountaineers Adventure Club (MAC). Read more…

While traveling solo to remote and wild places, I had been in some dicey situations. The risks were real, but I knew of no one else interested in exploring the nether regions of wilderness, nor the Himalayan front range from east to west, nor the ancient trade routes that connect Tibet to India through massive ranges, passes that cut deep, from north to south where borders often go unmarked – and so I had gone alone. Read more…

This summer, I interned with The Mountaineers Mountain Workshop youth program. It taught me a lot about what it means to help a community. Getting people outdoors — especially those who don’t usually have the opportunity — can make all the difference in their day, week and even life. Read more…

The last patch of shade disappears in a wavering blue line, distorted by the heat. I sit on the scorching sand in exasperation. We are still five miles from the car, and I feel like garbage. I’m dizzy, a bit nauseous, and have a headache. After a year of hiking in the Northwest, I’ve forgotten about the unrelenting desert sun and my 2.5 liters of water was not nearly enough... I am dehydrated, and badly. Read more…

Escape. Flee. Run away. Most likely derived from the 1500s Middle Dutch word lopen, the meaning of the word elope has shifted over time. From its origins describing a simple, non-romantic escape, elope morphed to mean a scandalous affair wherein a married woman ran off with her lover. The affair disappeared, but the scandal remained, when eloping changed once again to mean a secret marriage without parental consent. Read more…

Each week we bring you a personal story from one of our members. For our member profile this week we talked to... Read more…

When training your upper body at home, it’s easy to train your pushing muscles (chest, shoulders, triceps) with pushups, and your core (abdominals, lower back, obliques) with various ab exercises such as planks. For your pulling muscles, however, more creativity is required. If you have a simple pull-up bar and you have the strength for pull-ups, great. If not, here are great pulling exercises you can do with items at home. Read more…

In the dark days of winter, one of the few reliefs we have from the gloomy weather is the promise of snow. Uncommon in the lowlands west of the Cascades, snow is a treat reserved for just a few days every year, blanketing the damp Northwest in a sheet of white. As a result, lowland snow days are a hectic delight. School is cancelled, roads are salted, snow plows deployed, and the Midwesterners shake their heads at our four inch dusting. Each year we act like it’s a surprise – and it may just be that it’s more fun that way. Read more…

A passionate skier since he was a child, Anders Morley dreamed of going on a significant adventure, something bold and of his own design. And so one year in his early thirties, he decided to strap on cross-country skis to travel across Canada in the winter alone. Read more…

Despite summer 2020 being the tenth year of summer camp, it was a year of firsts in more ways than one. With the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in March, by June safety was a primary concern for both campers and staff. It led us to wonder – can we still provide summer camp? And if so, what can be done to preserve that classic camp feeling? Sitting shoulder-to shoulder eating s’mores was off the table, but there had to be a way to reclaim the spark that only camp can bring. Read more…

Every winter I warm a kettle of cinnamon and cloves and sit down to write holiday cards to friends and family who supported me throughout the year. This personal ritual is something we practice as an organization as well. Read more…

Volunteer-led outdoor education is the heart and soul of The Mountaineers. Our instructors are passionate about sharing their love of the outdoors with others, and many of our students choose to play an important role in our community as volunteer instructors after graduation. Read more…

Like many aspects of our lives, 2020 has been a roller coaster of a year for public lands. During the initial weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, public lands in Washington State closed as a result of Governor Inslee’s ”Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order. Read more…

I grabbed my antique wooden snowshoes and headed for the door. Growing up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, solo adventures every weekend were the norm as a kid. Winters were my favorite; a blanket of snow transformed the world into a black and white vintage photo from December through April. My brothers and I would skate on the lake and wander the empty woods surrounding our small cabin until dusk. Read more…

The emptiness of Northeastern Washington’s Salmo-Priest Wilderness has never felt more comforting. I stand alone on a ridge gazing out over waves of emerald ridges, shadowed by processions of white puffy clouds. Soft, warm breezes whistle through silver snags, prompting boughs of bear grass to delicately sway. I haven’t encountered another human all day; out in all of that wildness before me, some of Washington’s last grizzlies still roam. I finally feel safe and relieved from the ravages of the pandemic sweeping the world outside my wilderness. Read more…

Marge Mueller, author, co-author, book designer, mapmaker, illustrator, and lifetime member of The Mountaineers, passed away in September at the age of 84.

Many think of Mountaineers Books as synonymous with outdoor legends like Fred Beckey, Harvey Manning, Ira Spring, and others whose guidebooks were published to much acclaim and who inspired a new generation of writers and photographers. There is, however, one woman—an established Pacific Northwest author in her own right—who helped make so much of the success of their work possible. Read more…

At 5:30am the arctic sun illuminates icebergs with delicate bands of yellow light. My Zodiac ride to explore Disko Bay leaves in 30 minutes, and I need to find vodka, fast. Read more…

The snow rushes past in a swift river of movement. The slough was kicked off by my turns above, and the loose powder is now flowing through a natural gully in the snow, no more than six inches wide. That’s not so bad. I think. It looks like a little creek; totally manageable. Without further hesitation, I turn my skis to cross the stream. Read more…

By the time Mercedes Pollmeier arrived at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), she’d lived in Australia, China, Mauritius, and had spent considerable time in Germany with her grandma. The daughter of a German father and an Indian South African mum, Mercedes had seen a lot of the world already when a full-ride tennis scholarship brought her to the U.S. at 17. A multilingual world citizen, the starry-eyed teen had her eyes keenly set on one thing: the Olympics. Little did she know that she’d soon meet a strength coach who would forever change the course of her life. Read more…

It’s a chilly March morning in Provo, Utah, 2020. Kimber Cross has been flown here by the outdoor meal brand Peak Refuel to shoot a short film about her journey into ice climbing. As the team walks down the snow-packed trail to a frozen waterfall, Kimber feels the eyes of passersby, and they’re staring. Maybe it’s because of the big, red cameras that stand in contrast to the stark landscape, but an old fear starts to creep into her psyche, a fear that tells her to hide. All eyes focus on the tool strapped to her pack. Read more…

Each week we bring you a personal story from one of our members. For our member profile this week we talked to... Read more…

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to take a group of incoming college freshmen on a rafting trip in Arizona. I scrambled to get all my gear together before we launched, and that first night I realized that I had forgotten to pack my tent. Thankfully we were in the desert, and I was sleeping on my boat, so I didn’t have to worry about insects and other critters on the beach. The first night I lucked out with a light breeze coming off the water and a crystal clear sky. I slept like a rock. Read more…

Chunks of rough rock covered our trail in the dry, scrubby foothills of the Taurus Mountains. The Mediterranean Sea glittered below us as we climbed, 85 miles into our 115-mile, 14-day journey. Read more…

It was a bitterly cold day in early November, and our small group of four canyoneers had just donned our wetsuits on the hillside above the canyon. The cold weather meant water levels in the glacier-fed river were at their lowest for the year, a key consideration when descending a deep, narrow slot canyon that has never been explored before. Read more…

Now more than ever, our small businesses need your support. They’re the ones who help keep your bag dry on rainy nights, your spork full, and your puffies stuffed. If you’re doing any shopping, please consider going local and supporting one of our partners: Read more…

Thomas O’Keefe is a conservationist who is equally comfortable paddling a Class IV river as he is testifying before Congress (wearing his trademark bow tie). The longtime Pacific Northwest Stewardship Director for American Whitewater, Tom has dedicated his life to protecting whitewater rivers. Tom works closely with The Mountaineers to advocate for our wild places and provides strategic advice as a member of the Advisory Council. Here, we get to know Tom and learn what sparked his passion for protecting and stewarding public lands. Plus, we learn a great trick for recruiting Mountaineers members! Read more…

In Journeys North, legendary trail angel and thru-hiker Barney Scout Mann spins a compelling tale of six hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail on their trek from Mexico to Canada. This ensemble story unfolds as these half-dozen hikers — including Barney and his wife, Sandy (Frodo) — trod north, facing a once-in-a-generation drought and early severe winter storms that test their will. In fact, only a third of all hikers who set out on the trail that year would finish. Read more…

In the past several years, climbing El Capitan in Yosemite National Park has blown up in the mainstream consciousness. With Free Solo winning an Oscar and the Dawn Wall ascent getting publicized in The New York Times, it seems as if everyone has a clear picture of what climbing El Cap is like. It is easy to imagine being up on the side of the wall when you see it on a high definition movie theater screen. But is it as easy as people make it look?  Read more…