Mountaineer Magazine

In 2005, Dr. Carolyn Finney visited the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta with her father, a stoic man who grew up in the segregated South. She was startled when he grabbed her with a stricken look on his face. “I thought he was having a heart attack,” Finney said during a recent lecture at the University of Washington. Read more…

Wolf Bauer, one of The Mountaineers’ oldest and most distinguished members, passed away on January 23, 2016, a month shy of his 104th birthday. He was born on February 24, 1912. Read more…

In preparation for the upcoming snow season, I recommend skiers focus on strengthening their quads, core, and other muscles around the hips and knees. However, it’s important not to overlook the small hinge that transfers ground force through the rest of the body: the ankle. Read more…

I’m not a joiner. I’ve never been drawn to participate in structured organizations to make social contacts, network, or fulfill a need to belong to a group. So how did I become fully engaged with The Mountaineers in progressively more involved and time-consuming roles? I’ve asked myself this question more than once, and being asked to write his column has moved me to self-reflection to distill my motivations into words. Read more…

In 1934, a group of aspiring Seattle peak baggers lined the railings of the Rialto Building to watch a young University of Washington student named Wolf Bauer rappel three stories down the central shaft. The maneuver was one of several climbing techniques Wolf had taught himself using materials solicited from family ties in Germany. In lieu of a belay device or climbing harness, neither of which had been invented, Wolf ran two lines of rope between his legs, around one thigh, up and across his chest, over his shoulder, and down his back. Read more…

In many mountainous and polar regions, snow turns pink in the summer as communities of algae blossom. The pigmentation evolved as a protective mechanism against high levels of radiation. During this era of rising temperatures, the algae creates a feedback effect whereby the darkness spreading over the snow absorbs more of the sun’s rays to increase melting, adding more reflective water to the snow that in turn feeds the algae, furthering warming, accelerating climate change. Read more…

During my previous life as a sportswriter, an NBA player once made me wait for an arranged interview while he horsed around with ball boys in front of his locker. After a long spell of this, he grew bored and finally turned to me. Read more…

Do you have tips on ways to avoid blisters on a hike? Are you the best at pitching a tent in the rain? Have you created a fool-proof packing list? We want to know!  Read more…

We thought we were in a safe spot, but before we knew it, my Dad was falling into a crevasse. Moments earlier, we had arrived back at high camp and started to unclip from the rope – the tether that allows climbers to catch one another in the event of a fall. Then, in an instant, the snow collapsed under Dad. He pulled his leg out, but was unable to gain purchase and started sliding down the slope into the void. Only one of us, a new climber named Scott, was still attached to him. Read more…

Mountaineers seem to be in constant motion: skiing, hiking, climbing, paddling, scrambling, and exploring. Yet moments of stillness can bring equal restoration to our restless souls. Capturing all of these moments in wild places is a legacy many adventurers share, and today it’s easier than ever to bring others along on our trips through social media. Instagram is an incredible place to find inspiration, meet new people, and connect with the world around us. Read more…

Lovers of wild places owe a lot to the year 1968. That fall, Congress gave us three key conservation victories: the establishment of North Cascades National Park, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the National Trails System Act. Read more…

The first time I tried my hand at astrophotography (shooting the stars, as opposed to shooting stars) was on a clear night just outside Mount Rainier National Park. I was renting a cabin with my wife and her family, a trio of sisters from Colombia who spoke frequently about the possibility of seeing wildlife. I left them for the pitch darkness down the road along the Nisqually River. Read more…

For Mountaineers member Matt Ray, the most transformational experiences of his life happened at a summer camp in the North Woods of Wisconsin. Part traditional sports camp and part old-fashioned sleepaway camp, PorterCamp offers a safe space for campers and staff to build a better understanding of who they are, while learning to develop healthy relationships and having a lot of fun in the process. Matt attended as a boy, and has since committed over half of his life volunteering to ensure today’s young campers experience the same magic he did more than three decades ago. Read more…

I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you. It’s a hard trek during winter. My best friend and I took on the challenge last spring, breaking trail for a full mile through fresh powder with heavy backpacks. We felt breathless as we snowshoed four miles to one of the highest points in Tahoma State Forest. But with every crunch beneath our snowshoes — and between the sounds of our groans - the top of Mount Rainier became more and more visible. Read more…

Our family has hiked together since our 12-year-old daughter was a newborn. I remember our daughter’s first decade as a series of literal peaks and valleys, many of them in the Olympics. I can picture her chasing butterflies over Marmot Pass at age five, and searching for fairies in old growth cathedrals along the Dungeness River. When she finished first grade we backpacked into Grand Valley, then clambered up Grand Peak, a perch with majestic views into the heart of the Olympic wilderness. Read more…

White, male and “midcareer,” Seattle’s Charles Beall in a lot of ways is the face of the National Park Service that turned 100 on August 25, 2016.

He also may be the best hope the agency has for changing that face to match the diversity that is rapidly transforming this country. And the reasons essentially start out the same: Because he is white, male and “midcareer.” Read more…

Perhaps it was the splash of the shy platypus as it swam away after a close encounter with us on the trail, or the snarl of Tasmanian devils feeding on carcasses and biting each other at a sanctuary near the start of our trek. Or maybe it was the zzzzzzzzip of a big, black currawong bird unzipping a backpack and helping itself to the snacks in our backpacks, or the THUMP of the Bennett’s wallaby jumping away with a joey in her pouch as we watched from our hut. One thing was certain: we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Read more…

I was not stoked to write this column, not stoked at all, bra’.

When I hear someone say how stoked they are to get on with whatever it is they are getting on with, I get wistful at the lack of context.  Read more…

The Mountaineers first met Tyrhee Moore in The Adventure Gap, a book we published chronicling the first all African-American summit attempt on Denali. Tyrhee was among the youngest of nine climbers, ranging in age from 17 to 65, to attempt the climb America’s highest peak. Since the 2013 expedition, his outdoor resume has grown to include Grand Teton, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Aconcagua. His experiences and challenges in the outdoors have garnered national attention, and he’s risen as an advocate for increasing interest and advocacy amongst black youth in outdoor spaces. Today Tyrhee speaks around the country on topics regarding the adventure gap and conservation leadership, and is a champion for increasing diversity in the outdoors. Read more…

Sarah Lange is an outdoor recreation planner for the U.S. Forest Service. She’s also a former Mountaineers staff member, working as the Public Lands Program Manager from 2010-2013. At the 2017 Mountaineers Leadership Conference, Sarah was part of a land manager and partners panel and discussed ways that Mountaineers leaders can integrate stewardship and low-impact recreation into their trips and activities. Heading into the busy summer season, I caught up with Sarah to better understand her perspective as a land manager, and to learn more about how our leaders can encourage and inspire others to be responsible stewards of our public lands. Read more…

My only purpose in life is to live.

Is that too egoistic?

Maybe too amoral? Read more…

Eastern Washington’s third highest summit, 7,257-foot Mount Bonaparte rises all alone in the Okanogan Highlands. Bonaparte is a monadnock (also known as an inselberg) — a geological term taken from Mount Monadnock, a popular southern New Hampshire mountain memorialized by 19th century writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The word monadnock is of Abenaki origin translating to isolated mountain. Monadnocks are lone isolated mountains standing above their surroundings. They have fared better than their environs in surviving the agents of erosion. Broad lofty Mount Bonaparte indeed stands alone, and with a 3,500-foot prominence, is distinguishable from quite a distance away. Read more…

As a Mountaineer with summer objectives, you may already have a solid exercise program that includes a weekend adventure, weekday trainings, and weekly strength and flexibility workouts. But a healthy lifestyle is more than your exercise routine. If you’re like a lot of people I know, you may be cutting corners on sleep, stressing about work or school, eating in the car to fit everything in, and skipping social commitments with friends. Read more…

I started climbing about twelve years ago, in the mountains of North Carolina in my mid-20s. Climbing did not come naturally to me, and I still constantly fight the cognitive dissonance of wanting to ascend higher and master moves while facing a petrifying fear of heights. Through the years I have experimented with ways to manage this fear, which has made room for this activity to make a positive impact on my life. I’ve used climbing as a vehicle for travel and exploration. My closest friends are those who’ve tied into a rope with me. And climbing is the activity I most enjoy teaching to new and aspiring Mountaineers. Read more…

The wilderness was vast and seemingly empty, but as I motored along I was nestled in a glowing cocoon of technological magic. Not one but two Garmin GPS chart plotters silently communed with the satellites overhead. My radar system could penetrate the thickest of fogs, though the day’s clear skies and sunshine made the prospect unlikely. My depth-sounder pinged sonar pulses off the rocks below, and I even carried something called, in bureaucratese, an Emergency Position Indicating Rescue Beacon, or, more jauntily, an EPIRB. Supposedly it would, at the panicked touch of a button, supply my coordinates and credit card information to the nearest helicopter rescue service. Read more…

High Country News recently published an essay by Ethan Linck, “Your Stoke Won’t Save Us,” questioning the efficacy of outdoor recreationists and the outdoor industry as advocates for conservation. In a sense, Linck is right, stoke alone won’t save us, and the most unimpeachable personal conservation ethic won’t either. Read more…

Judy Sterry remembers the exact day she joined The Mountaineers. It was her 14th birthday, the minimum age required to become a member at the time. By 16, she had climbed all six of Washington’s major Cascade volcanoes: Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, Mount Olympus, and Mount Rainier – 65,640 feet in total elevation. Read more…

Ruth Nielsen has practiced law in Washington for 30 years, specializing primarily in sports-related personal injury defense and outdoor product liability defense. She has successfully defended claims involving many of the activities that we lead at The Mountaineers - including skiing, rock climbing, mountaineering, and backpacking - and she is a frequent presenter at The Mountaineers annual Leadership Conference. Read more…

When worlds collide, it’s usually a bad thing. But when geology and botany come together for Mark Darrach, he’s as happy as a Polystichum lemmonii on an ultramafic substrate. Read more…

It’s no surprise to any of us who have been hiking and adventuring in our wild places since the days of heavy luggedsole boots, knee high cotton socks, and external frames that in the words of conservationist Rick McGuire of the North Cascades Conservation Council and Alpine Lakes Protection Society: we are currently facing a human tsunami on our trails. And if we’re to stay true to this metaphor, a tsunami inundating our wild places isn’t going to leave them in good shape. Read more…