Mountaineers (Society)

The Mountaineers is an outdoor club, founded in 1906, to promote the discovery, conservation and documentation of the mountains, forests and watercourses of the Pacific Northwest. Henry Landes was the first president of the Mountaineers with notable founding members as Edmond S. Meany and Asahel Curtis. In 1906, Curtis, together with W. Montelius Price and Henry Landes (then UW Dean of Geology), formulated the idea to create a new Northwest mountaineering club. After much subsequent discussion, a constitution for the new club was drafted in 1907. At the first meeting on January 18, 1907, the question of annual and local outings was discussed. The first local outing took place at Fort Lawton and the West Point Lighthouse. In 1910, their outing was to Glacier Peak and Lake Chelan. The fifth annual outing was to Vancouver, WA by way of Rainier National Park. In 1914, their outing took them to Mt. Rainier. There were 151 initial charter members. Over half of the members were women; four of the women charter members were physicians. Women mountaineers constituted an important contributing membership to the club and are very prominent in many of the early photographs of the Mountaineers outings. Among the other outstanding members was Edmond Meany who in 1908 took over the leadership of the Mountaineers. He presided over the organization for 27 years. They also introduced alpine skiing to the area. The Mountaineers organization also authored a basic text on mountaineering entitled "Freedom of the Hills". Headquartered in Seattle, they eventually created branches in five other Washington cities. The Mountaineers are still very active with branches in Bellingham, Everett, Foothills, Kitsap, Olympia, Seattle and Tacoma.