We did it! 100,000 human-powered miles!

As an organization, The Mountaineers just reached a huge milestone. Our members - through their collective trips - just reached the 100,000 mile mark for the year - the weekend before Christmas (our members registered about 800 miles on Mountaineers.org on 12/19 and 12/20)! That’s a lot of human-powered adventuring in 2015!  This includes 30 MILLION feet of elevation gain over all of our different activities.  

100,000 Miles

When measuring the collective distance our members have traveled with us,  The Mountaineers have logged 100,600  miles of travel in 2015 (as of 12/21/15). That means our membership has (collectively) traveled the equivalent of: 

• Circling the earth 4 times along the equator!
• Making it almost  half way to the moon (please astronomers, no letters. I said "about!").  
• Completing the PCT more than 37 times. 
• Going  200 times farther than The Proclaimers were willing to walk. 

• The length of all the blood vessels in the average human body (yuk!). 

Elevation: over 30 Million feet

Sorry kayakers and sailors, but we can't credit your efforts when we look at this metric (but we know your longer nautical miles make up for it!!). Collectively, our climbers, hikers, scramblers, navigation courses, youth programs, etc. etc. etc. have accomplished 30,165,272 feet of elevation in their respective activities (as of 12/21/15)! Collectively, The Mountaineers membership has: 

• Climbed Mt. Everest's elevation more than 1039 times. 
• Completely left the earth's atmosphere.
• Completed the combined elevation of the "Seven Summits" (a collective elevation of 138,960 feet) more than 217 times. 

These are some impressive accomplishments! And this information is also a conservative estimate that under-reports our actual achievements because our Leaders sometimes forget to close-out their trips or update the mileage and elevation gain that took place after they are over. It is clear, however, that we get people outside in a way that few other organizations in Washington can rival. For example, by one method of calculating how many calories you would burn if you merely WALKED 100,000  miles, an average person would burn over 10,000,000 (take THAT 24 Hour Fitness)! 

How we did it

We offer a variety of activities and all of them contributed to these metrics. In terms of mileage, here are the top 5 activity leaders: 

1. Day hikers (32,450 miles)
2. Scramblers (23,925 miles)
3. Climbers (18,920 miles)
4. Sea Kayakers (7,445 - NAUTICAL - miles)
5. Backpackers (5,500 miles)

“The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.” John Muir