Everett Archives: The Legacy of the Everett Mountaineers
The Mountaineers is an organization you may not think about every day, but if you like to hike in the greater Everett area, you probably owe the Everett chapter a big thank you. Without their work, there would be no fire lookouts at Heybrook Ridge, Mount Pilchuck, or Whitehorse Mountain. And, arguably, if there were no Everett Mountaineers, there would be no North Cascades National Park.
This is their story.
So much depends on a hearty Everett dentist being in the right place at the right time. In this case, the right place was several thousand feet up an alpine slope. Dr. H.B. Hinman, a Riverside resident and outdoor enthusiast, was climbing Mount Rainier in 1909 when he struck up a conversation with one Asahel Curtis. Curtis was heading up the Seattle chapter of the Mountaineers. Hinman and Curtis threw around the idea of forming an Everett chapter of the club. At the time there were no auxiliary branches of the Mountaineers, but Everett people have a way of getting things done; Hinman was undaunted by formalities.
A snowy hike // UW Archives
Dr. Hinman formed the Everett auxiliary group of the Mountaineers in 1910 with forty charter members residing in Everett and another 5 members in outlying areas. By 1912 the Everett chapter was sponsoring twenty-two local walks a year to then-wild places like Silver Lake, Forest Park, and the Tulalip Reservation. They also sponsored three-day outings to Mount Index and Whitehorse Mountain.
These excursions were something like Sunday picnics on steroids. Men wore suits and hats as they tromped through the forest, and women wore ankle-length tweed skirts and button-up shoes. The trekkers stopped at intervals to cook food over the fire and dine on blankets among the salal and ferns of the coastal woods.
About half of the founding members were women, many of them schoolteachers. The Mountaineers were an egalitarian group in an era where this was definitely not a common practice.
Up, up and away // Mountaineers
These local walks were pretty chill. The group’s montane excursions were a different matter. The Mountaineer’s early approach to scaling a mountain was to split a large group (often up to seventy members) into separate companies. These factions were lashed together by a rope and the members slowly climbed single-file in their non-waterproof formal clothing. They quickly abandoned this tactic for obvious reasons -- if one of the climbing party were to fall into a crevasse, the rest of the group would follow. During the 1910 and 1920s, West Coast American mountaineering was still in its infancy. European gear was difficult to import and REI was a few decades away (REI’s story is inextricably linked to the Mountaineers, but that’s another tale).
In 1927, members of the Everett Mountaineers began to lobby congress to create a national park comprised of Glacier Peak and the Whitechuck Valley. They were unsuccessful, but over the decades the project grew in scope and changed. And, ultimately the lobbying efforts of the Mountaineers, in conjunction with other outdoor advocates, resulted in the creation of the North Cascades National Park.
Summit // Mountaineers
As the century progressed, the Mountaineers continued in their mission to empower folks to enjoy the great outdoors. They published great books, many of them still the gold standard texts for outdoor rec to this day.
In 1946 they began offering basic climbing courses. In 1976 they had to limit enrollment to these classes due to the fitness boom sweeping the nation. The Mountaineers remodeled the Mount Pilchuck Lookout in 1989. In 2002, the group remodeled the Heybrook Lookout. Fire lookout remodeling efforts are no joke. They’re completely done on a volunteer basis -- including hiking most of the building materials up the sides of ridges and mountains and laboring at mountaintop heights.
This is the work of the Everett Mountaineers. They are also responsible for generations of educated outdoors enthusiasts with climbing skills and the knowledge to teach others how to recreate responsibly and conserve our natural environment. They treated women as equals in the outdoors and published books to disseminate proper climbing techniques.
So before you don your autumn beanie and lace up your hiking boots for a jaunt into the hills this season, think of the Everett Mountaineers. They went before you to clear the way.
This article was independently researched and not paid for or sponsored by the Mountaineers, a nonprofit group. The main source for the text is the book “The Mountaineers: A History” by Jim Kjeldsen. The Everett chapter of the Mountaineers is still active -- you can learn more about them here.
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