Books

The National Trails System (NTS) Act was passed in 1968, making 2018 its fiftieth anniversary. Among all of the trails stewarded by this Act, the 2600-mile Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) is one of just 11 designated National Scenic Trails. The anniversary coincides with publication of Mountaineers Books' final volume in its four-book Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail set. Released in February, Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail: Northern California joins the Southern California, Oregon, and Washington volumes to finish the most up-to-date and comprehensive guidebooks to this long-distance challenge. Read more…

We're crazy for stories -- campfire stories, stories in books, stories told at organized events, podcast stories and . . . well you get the idea. Recently we heard an inspirational podcast from She-Explores about how women over 50 are participating in the outdoors. We thought we'd share it with you. Read more…

"I just got back from a quick trip to the land of a thousand roads and zero caribou: New York City. It messed up my head. I've spent too much time on the land — a lot of it alone, talking only to myself — to adjust overnight to that blizzard of people and traffic, sirens and signs and stink and noise. My inability to live life through my iPhone made it worse. Apparently, half a century of learning not to get lost on the tundra has little value. What matters now is not to be virtually lost." Read more…

We are excited to launch an integrated Mountaineers Programs and Mountaineers Books website in an update we're calling mountaineers.org 3.0 in mid-February! This newest set of updates is focused on bringing Mountaineers Books and Mountaineers Programs together under one roof.  Read more…

Join Mountaineers Books for an evening with renowned photographer Jim Herrington as he presents The Climbers, the culmination of his two-decades-long project to capture the mountaineering icons roughly the 1930s to 1970s who used primitive gear, along with their considerable wits, talent, and fortitude, to tackle unscaled peaks around the world. His book includes 60 intimate, black & white portraits of greats Reinhold Messner, Royal Robbins, Gwen Moffat, Tom Hornbein, Yvon Chouinard, and Pertemba Sherpa, among others. Published in October, 2017 by Mountaineers Books, The Climbers received both the Grand Prize and the Mountaineering History Award at the 2017 Banff Mountain Book Festival. Read more…

A significant goal of The Mountaineers and its publishing division, Mountaineers Books, is to recognize and encourage diversity in our community and in the books we publish. A recent article in Alpinist Magazine reviewed four climbing instructional texts in regard to gender diversity and gave Mountaineers Books positive marks. Read more…

Northern Pygmy-Owls must enlarge their territories in the winter when prey becomes less abundant. Small mammals are harder to find, reptiles and amphibians are in hibernation, and many small birds have migrated. And so these owls often move downslope to places along waterways or near bird feeders, where there is a greater concentration of passerines and rodents. Read more…

Fred Beckey, a legend among Northwest Mountaineers, and a climber, environmentalist, historian, and Mountaineers Books author, passed away on October 30, 2017. On December 3 we will gather to celebrate his amazing life. Please join us to honor his enduring impact. Read more…

Cheers to Wild Places. To rugged, rocky, rain-soaked, sun-baked, out-of-the-way  places. To places we visit often. And places we’ll get to soon. Read more…

The Wild Lines of Jeremy Collins, a 2018 wall calendar, features 12 of the artist's amazingly detailed, hand-drawn works. Each month offers stunning original art and a mindful Action Prompt from Jeremy to encourage community engagement, as well as mini-essays about the artwork and notable dates in environmental activism. *We are sorry to inform you that the calendars are SOLD OUT* Read more…

Mountaineers Books, in partnership with  Seward Park Audubon Center and  The Trail Posse, presents J.R. Harris' Way Out There: Adventurers of a Wilderness Trekker talk and book signing at Third Place Books - Seward Park in Seattle on Wednesday, November 29 from 7-8pm.  The talk is free and open to the public.  Read more…

Among the most exciting travel destinations in South America, Peru boasts a wealth of trekking opportunities from the Amazonian jungle to glaciated mountain ranges, from remote villages to ancient ruins, and much more. Join Mountaineers Books’ on November 16 for a live webisode exploring this "Last Inca Bridge". Featuring Robert & Daisy Kunstaetter, travel writers and adventurous ex-pats who co-authored the new book, "Trekking Peru: A Traveler’s Guide", learn about the wealth of trekking opportunities in Peru. Read more…

Chosen from a field of more than 170 international titles, The Climbers by photographer Jim Herrington was awarded the prestigious Grand Prize at the recent 2017 Banff Mountain Book Competition in Banff, Alberta, Canada.  The Climbers was also named the competition's Category Winner for Mountaineering History. Read more…

Emily Erickson, Mountaineers Books sales representative, is constantly advising her bookstore, outdoor retail, and parks store customers about the titles in our library that are both great reads and will be strong sellers in their stores. Here she shares five books that are always on her “Recommended List.” Read more…

I think what has made this book even more meaningful for all of us here is the subject itself—birds. When the project first came to us, photographer Gerrit Vyn used the title “Why Birds?” It’s a good question. Why do we care about them? What makes them so interesting and draws our attention? How is it that so many birds are iconic and for so many different reasons? Read more…

Fred Beckey, a legend among Northwest Mountaineers, and a climber, environmentalist, historian, and Mountaineers Books author, passed away on October 30, 2017. He was 94. Read more…

Bill Thorness's new book, Cycling the Pacific Coast: The Complete Guide from Canada to Mexico, is an epic accomplishment both for the  effort it takes to research and write a nearly 2000-mile route, and because Bill's book replaces one of the longest running and most popular guidebooks  in Mountaineers Books library. The old title, in its fourth edition, had a great run (er, ride) but needed a complete rewrite. Here we talk with Bill about the route. Read more…

I’ve hiked in some of the world’s most beautiful and awe-inspiring places. I’ve logged miles in the Andes, Alps, Apennines, and the Appalachians. The Rockies, Sierras, Peninsula Ranges, and escarpments of the upper Midwest, too. I’ve trekked in the Pyrenees, England’s Lakes District, the Scottish Highlands, and Bulgaria’s Pirin Mountains. I’ve snowshoed and skied in Japan’s Ishikari range, the Austrian Alps, and Bolivia’s Cordillera Real. I’ve hiked deserts in the American West and in Northern Chile. Explored Patagonia, the Peruvian Amazon, and Ybycui National Park in Paraguay. I’ve hiked national parks in the Yukon Territory, Quebec and a whole lot in between. And I have logged thousands of miles in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve seen amazing landscapes and amassed incredible backcountry experiences. But my fondest, most vivid, and most heartwarming memories involve the people I have encountered along the way. Read more…

Join us October 24, at 7pm for the next Mountaineers Books Web Series event with Molly Hashimoto, author of the new book Colors of the West: An Artist’s Guide to Nature’s Palette. Molly is an award-winning artist and art teacher. In her book, Molly explains techniques for creating successful watercolor paintings en plein air, a French term meaning literally “in the open air.” Read more…

I sell Mountaineers Books for a living—not a tough assignment for someone who loves reading and outdoor sports. Our library is deep and strong, but since I had to keep my recommendations here to five, I've included some lesser known titles as well as popular selections. You won’t be disappointed with any of these. Read more…

Just try to get journalist Greg Johnston to stop talking about the allure of Washington’s Pacific Coast: the wild headlands, windswept beaches, and salmon-rich rivers.  Read more…

It was one of the rare late winter weeknights with a full moon and a clear sky, but I missed a turn. Our Seattle Stairway Walks hiking group was passing several back doors (or were they front doors?) going up many unintended Magnolia steps. This was not the Gaia route I had planned and followed the prior week. Nor was it the highlighted route on the map tucked in my trouser pocket, or the same Gaia route on my iPhone.  Read more…

Join us on September 21 for the next Mountaineers Books Web Series episode with author Maria Mudd Ruth. Maria calls herself an accidental naturalist and has written more than a dozen books about natural wonders that have, one, fascinated her and, two, she became obsessed with learning about.  Maria’s new book, A Sideways Look at Clouds, shares her curiosity about clouds and what she’s learned about them—why there are so many variations, what they tell us, how far away they are, and why they are even there, among much more. Read more…

Mountaineers Books is thrilled to announce that two of our recent titles are finalists for the 2017 Washington State Book Award — My Old Man and the Mountain: A Memoir by Leif Whittaker and Turning Homeward: Restoring Hope and Nature in the Urban Wild by Adrienne Ross Scanlan. Each of these are debut books by the authors. Read more…

Although my bookshelf overflows with well-thumbed copies of our where-to hiking guides, these stories and how-to titles have each offered me a different way of seeing the world. Read more…

Mary Metz, current title Senior Editor, is well into her thirty-first year at Mountaineers Books. She found picking only five books to be quite a challenge, so she’s glad that her predecessors already covered two of her all-time faves, Stehekin and A Field Guide to the Cascades and Olympics. And she cheats a little.* Read more…

In 2007, I was working for The Washington Post and Slate magazine in New York City. My role was to support the sales team in developing media plans and executing digital media campaigns across our publishing platforms: The Washington Post, Slate, Newsweek and Budget Travel. I worked for The Washington Post for about six years, during which time I watched the decline of print newspaper subscriptions as the ascendancy of online media, tablets and smartphones took hold. I experienced first-hand how digital devices altered the world of print publishing. Read more…

The converted bicycle wheel supports much of the litter’s weight, but this trail is miles of boulders and steep hairpin switchbacks, and the light is fading. In the beginning we tie a piece of webbing to the back of the litter for a tagline; four people hold the litter up and then a half-dozen other people grab onto this piece of webbing to keep the brakeless contraption from rocketing downhill with gravity. Nobody can see their feet, and this trail, like all trails, is too narrow to fit the litter in the middle with two people abreast on either side, so the people on the sides are intermittently mashed into trees, or have no footing and suddenly disappear downslope to be picked up at the next switchback. The folks on the front and back ends do not have a better time. Read more…

Mountaineers and friends are invited to join a free webinar, Tuesday, June 20, 7pm. Get tips for starting what for many is a bucket list item: hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) across your state. The presenter for this online event is Eli Boschetto, author of the new book, Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail: Oregon. Eli will talk about how to plan to section hike the Oregon length of the PCT, but his tips will be relevant to anyone planning  to hike the Washington PCT, too. Read more…

After climbing for over 20 years in the Cascades, I have lived through a few incidents and near-misses. This is the story of how I almost died glissading down Aasgard Pass in the Enchantments. Read more…