Mountaineer Magazine

We're very excited to be hosting IMG mountain guide and adventure writer Charlotte Austin for a one-night writing workshop. Whether you're an experienced author, part-time blogger, or curious novice, this class will give you a glimpse into the wide world of travel writing.  Read more…

Sometimes our passions find us young. Sometimes they don’t find us at all – and sometimes, we’re born for a specific purpose. For me, that purpose was adventure. Specifically, the kind that can be found trekking, kick-stepping and climbing up a mountain. And especially, the kind that is done with friends. Read more…

Today we wish a very Happy Birthday to our longest standing member: Mary Anderson – a Washington State native, longtime teacher in the Seattle Public School Districts, and co-founder of REI with her husband Lloyd (she holds membership card #2). She was one of a handful of Mountaineers instrumental in setting up our climbing course in 1936. Read more…

I fell in love with the snow as a child. We didn’t have a lot of the white stuff where I grew up near London, England but I was fortunate in that my parents took my brother and I skiing in Austria. Every winter after that I tried to get in at least one ski vacation.  Read more…

If you’ve spent any time at the Seattle Program Center, you’ve probably come across John Wick in the basement, building test friction slabs or adjusting plumbing to install a washing machine, or behind the climbing wall removing bee hives, or attending an event. A mechanical engineer by trade and longtime employee of Boeing, John has shared his professional skills along with his love of the outdoors with The Mountaineers and the greater outdoor community. Read more…

Life is all about mountains for Marybeth Dingledy — not just the kind you scale, but the rugged terrain you have to slog up, over, around or through when life goes sideways. Read more…

For veterans Steve Redenbaugh and Michael Fairman, climbing together was a way to cope with their struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Read more…

Snapping awake sometime before dawn, I extracted myself from sleeping bag and tent as quietly as possible so as not to awaken my tentmate. Snuggling in down parka, alpaca cap and mittens, I found a perch on a rock in the front row of the sunrise light show over the Cordillera across the deep gorge below. Read more…

As Mountaineers, we see the outdoors as the ultimate community center. It's a venue for young and old, new and seasoned, professional and novice to convene around a common interest. The renovated program center in Tacoma is an indoor space that proves the outdoors is not the only place Mountaineers come together.  Read more…

Few places on earth rival the rugged beauty and biological diversity of Washington state’s North Cascades mountain range. Read more…

Several months ago, I successfully rehabilitated my core and left hip stabilizer muscles, but steep steps remained awkward and tentative on my right leg. It turns out that crucial gluteal muscles were lagging behind those on the left side. It was time to even things out. Read more…

They’re all over Latin America. Along roadsides and in town squares; makeshift memorials honoring the lives of so many who departed this world prematurely. Usually placed on location of a terrible accident; these memorials allow us to reflect on the life taken from that very spot—and perhaps to lament the unfortunate situation leading up to it — alcohol, speed, negligence, distraction — the list goes on. Read more…

It’s 1:50am. The faded beam of my headlamp illuminates the narrow trail ahead. A river rages somewhere in the distance, like static from an unseen television. My legs are jelly. My back is soaked in sweat. The rhythmic crunch of two sets of feet behind me keeps my body pushing forward. The crew — Jordan, Dills, and I — have been hiking for six grueling hours, gaining 2,000 feet in elevation before winding around Lost Creek Ridge, and now sinking back to sea level as we near the river. Read more…

“You guys got me, right?” A student shouts down to her classmates, who are belaying her 50 feet into the air at Camp Long’s high ropes course. Her English is heavily accented, marking her Somalian roots, and the reply she gets from the ground comes from a native Spanish speaker, "Go, climb! You can make it!" Read more…

Last summer, I went on a hike with a group of Mountaineers staff and supporters to experience an example of the wild places we, as an organization, work to protect. We started out as so many Mountaineers trips do: meeting at a central location in Seattle, then carpooling to the mountains. Read more…

Mountaineer climbers in 1939 were well aware of their unparalleled good fortune. Only the highest Northwest peaks had been climbed, and all a young climber had to do to score a first ascent was head for the nearest blank spot on the map. Many of the mountains hadn’t even been surveyed, and the climbers often went without benefit of a map. Often they explored the area first and returned later, relying on their own notes to reach the summit. Read more…

My wife and I moved to Seattle nearly three years ago from Brooklyn, New York. It took us less than a year to decide to make Seattle our forever home. For outdoor lovers like us, how could we not? In under an hour on any given day, we can be on the trails headed to our campsite, in the mountains getting ready for a day of snowshoeing, or on the water in a kayak. Read more…

Many visitors to Rainier have visited Comet Falls - one of the more impressive falls in the park. If you haven’t been there, we highly recommend a visit. And continuing farther up the trail leads to two lesser-traveled spectacular places within the park. Read more…

In The Mountaineers: A History, longtime Mountaineers President Edmond Meany summed up the club’s mission in the 1910 annual: “This is a new country. It abounds in a fabulous wealth of scenic beauty. It is possible to so conserve parts of that wealth that it may be enjoyed by countless generations through the centuries to come… This club is vigilant for wise conservation and it is also anxious to blaze ways into the hills that anyone may follow.” Read more…

One of the most common questions I hear Mountaineers ask is how to prevent knee pain on steep hikes. Herein are strategies and resources for increasing your stamina, strength and flexibility so that knee pain may become a distant memory.  Read more…

In our suburban household in northern California, when the kids were little, we didn’t talk about conservation. But we did talk about love, care and respect — for our home, our selves, others — for our surroundings. When we went up to Lake Tahoe, we talked about how fragile an environment it was and how easily ruined. When we drove across the country to see grandparents, we talked about the landscape and the animals we saw, and how our behavior affects them. How many there are and how many there used to be.  Read more…

Usually visitors to Mt. Rainier National Park admire grand vistas and the natural world surrounding them. This is as it should be, but in addition to the glory of the place are two large memorials and numerous plaques commemorating the people and human history associated with the park. This installment of Our Secret Rainier tells you how to find the two memorials and provides the location of the smaller plaques located throughout the park.  Read more…

My plan was initially without a hitch. Hike from Longmire on the Wonderland Trail to Indian Henry’s Hunting Ground. Do a little photography in those famed fields, visit the Mirror Lakes and then head back out via the Kautz Creek Trail. It would be a nice 14.5-mile hike with some decent elevation gain. My hiking partner would leave a car at the Kautz Creek trailhead and we would drive back to Longmire to retrieve my vehicle. Plan was good — until my hiking partner couldn’t make it. I was on assignment, so the hike would go on.  Read more…

With headlamps switched on, we started up the Ingalls Creek trail. The first rays of dawn followed behind, ready to bask the forest in gold, while our lamps illuminated the trail in front — guiding us up and over the pass.  Read more…

I arrived early on my first day at Junior Mountaineers Summer Camp, excited to meet all the kids and ready to learn how this camp worked and what to do. After meeting the other counselors, my co-counselor Christoph and I read through the forms for each of our campers. Read more…

When I first learned The Mountaineers had a theater, I thought it was a bit strange. What does acting and drama have to do with mountaineering? The answer, in short, is community. Before forest access roads and rules that limit parties to 12, it was common for large groups of Mountaineers to spend days together just to get to where we now park our cars. To entertain each other in the evenings, animated camp-fire stories and performances, when organized with props, quickly became a type of theater. Read more…

You’ve reached the summit and the view is breathtaking: time for a “Summit-Selfie” to share your success with your friends...but there’s no cell coverage up here. You have a Personal Locator Beacon, but this doesn’t quite qualify as an emergency. Fortunately, you have a ham radio and can talk to the world. Read more…

The hair on my arms and back of my neck stood up straight. The summit rocks surrounding me buzzed like an electrical transformer. The fillings in my teeth hummed. A thick fog enveloped me. The sky lit up as thunder cracked. I stood in snow under a gray shroud at 14,000 feet preparing to die. I had gotten caught in an electrical storm on the summit of California’s Mount Shasta. Read more…

I consider myself one of the ‘lucky ones’. I learned to ski shortly after learning to walk, and remember a childhood of white Montana winters racing after my parents down the ski slopes. Winters get cold in Big Sky Country, but fueled on a steady stream of hot cocoa and M&Ms, my dad managed to teach not only me, but my younger twin-sisters, to be pretty darn good skiers. Read more…