Seattle Snowshoeing Committee
The Seattle Snowshoe Committee offers a one-stop shop for both learning and improving your snowshoeing skills as well as finding opportunities to explore all the great snowshoeing routes of the Pacific Northwest.
Learn
The Seattle Snowshoe Committee offers Basic Snowshoeing, Intermediate Snowshoeing, and Winter Camping courses each year focused on educating students to prepare, plan, and participate in snowshoe trips.
BASIC SNOWSHOEING
The Basic Snowshoeing Course offers an introduction to safe and enjoyable winter travel for the beginner. It is designed for people who want to get a taste of snowshoeing and pick up solid foundational skills.
INTERMEDIATE SNOWSHOEING
The Intermediate Snowshoeing Course is designed for adventurers who want to gain the skills and experience to handle more challenging snowshoe routes and terrain than those offered in Easy or Easy+ trips. Moderate and Strenuous trips are, in many cases, non-technical mountain-climbing routes with mountain peaks for destinations.
WINTER CAMPING
Learn to make a comfortable camp in the snow. The Winter Camping Course will cover both winter tent camping and non-emergency winter shelters (primarily snow caves, and other options).
IGLOO CAMPING
Learn to make an igloo. This course is for winter camping graduates or equivalent and will cover all the details on making an igloo shelter to be cozy and spend the night comforatably.
WINTER TRIP PLANNING - BASIC BACKCOUNTRY PREPAREDNESS
Learn how to combine avalanche and weather forecasts with maps to prepare for your trip in the backcountry. It caters to beginners and also to those who have AIARE-1 education to practice their trip-planning skills more.
A typical progression in avalanche education for recreationists is below:
Avalanche Awareness seminar is offered by us in collaboration with the North West Avalanche Center.
After Avalanche Awareness, typically individuals take AIARE-1 and although it is a great course and we recommend taking it if you plan to encounter avalanche terrain, we consider the commitment (fees and equipment cost) to take AIARE-1 makes the interest to take this course drop. The level of knowledge we anticipate among our snowshoeing participants who occasionally encounter avalanche terrain has enough knowledge to engage in the decision-making process and other route-finding discussions on the trip effectively. This step, we call, Basic Backcountry Preparedness.
We offer a Winter Trip Planning course, which is part of the Basic Backcountry Preparedness. Individuals interested can take the Avalanche Rescue Course hosted by guides and avalanche committees in The Mountaineers to learn to use the avalanche gear.
We also offer mentorships to those who like to lead intermediate snowshoeing trips for our committee and also to those who took the Winter Trip Planning course with us.
Join A Trip
Looking for a group of like-minded Mountaineers venturing out into the snow? You can find them on mountaineers.org!
We offer trips at a variety of levels of difficulty, so whether you're looking for a comfortable stroll through a valley or a strenuous conditioning climb up to a mountain peak, the Seattle Mountaineers have something for you.
Click the button below to find snowshoe trips led by members of the Seattle branch:
VOLUNTEER!
We are always in need of more volunteers for the snowshoeing programs. You can help us out by becoming a course instructor or a trip leader.
INSTRUCTING
We welcome our snowshoe graduates back to become instructors on our course field trips! Each field trip listing will have an associated Instructors listing, where you can sign up to help. No need to feel like a complete expert in our curriculum and in teaching methods, since new instructors are paired up with one of our experienced instructors so that you can learn the ropes. Find more details about course instruction on our Instructing page.
TRIP LEADERSHIP
Experienced snowshoers can volunteer to lead trips out into the backcountry. Trip leaders are responsible for deciding destinations and routes and safely guiding the group. Find out more details on trip leadership and the requirements for becoming a leader on our Leadership page and reach out to the committee or leadership chair to get guidance and process initiated.
Share
Mountaineers members are invited to join our Facebook group where you can share pictures, trip reports, and snowshoe-related news with other like-minded Mountaineers.