Tacoma Mountaineers Open House

Join us on June 22nd as Bree Loewen, Seattle Mountain Rescue member and recorder of some of the stranger and sweeter stories of adventure in the PNW, talks about her latest memoir: Found: A Life in Mountain Rescue. 

Bree has been a climbing ranger on Mount Rainier, which was the subject of her first book Pickets and Dead Men, an EMT, and a contributor to Climbing and Alpinist magazines. Now in her mid-thirties, Bree's a wife, alpinist, mother, raconteur, nursing student, and a leader of the Seattle Mountain Rescue (SMR). She's been on more than 100 rescues in the past three years and countless more over her career. In Found she writes about what it takes for her dedicated all-volunteer crew, both mentally and physically, to have the backs of every climber, backcountry skier, and hiker who head out toward Snoqualmie Pass.

SMR responds to everything from high profile multi-day rescues in horrendous weather to to folks calling to say they're being chased by baby bears. Bree has responded to calls about chest pain, has recovered the bodies of her own friends from avalanches and cornice failures, and has come to the rescue of callers panicking because their dog's stuck on a ledge (while failing to mention they climbed up to get their dog and are stuck too). The stories are sobering, or funny, or both, and offers a personal glimpse into the SMR crew and what good friends on a mission can accomplish in the middle of the night.