retrorewind
Alma Wagen The first female mountain guide at Mount Rainier National Park By Issy Steckel, Communications Associate
I
n 1918, Alma Wagen, an early member of The Mountaineers, was declared the first woman to join Mount Rainier’s guide staff. Upon accepting this position, Alma knew her accomplishment was not just personally life-changing, but also an opportunity to bring other women into climbing. “At last I had found the time and the place to climb, and I climbed hills and mountains and learned everything I possibly could about climbing,” she told a journalist in a 1923 interview for American Magazine. “Then I looked for new fields to conquer and found my life's work. I wanted to teach other women the joy of climbing.”
Destined for climbing Born in Minnesota in 1878, Alma grew up on her grandparents’ wheat farm. As a young girl, she had an irresistible desire to scramble up the wire frames of the windmills on their property and look out across the rolling plains. “I wanted to get up among the clouds and to feel myself free as the birds and the air,” Alma recounted. “To be able to shout my freedom as loudly as I liked without having someone point to me sadly and say, ‘It is not pretty for little girls to climb windmills.’” In search of higher peaks, Alma moved to Washington as soon as she graduated from college. She started her career teaching high school math in Tacoma, where she developed a reputation as a relentless grader among her students. On clear days, she would gaze out her classroom window to admire Mount Rainier. Arguably the best part of her teaching position was that she had summer breaks to explore the mountain ranges of the Pacific Northwest. Without any official wilderness navigation training, she went route-finding in the Olympic Mountains. She adventured with purpose through these scattered subalpine forests and broad valleys, with the Pacific Ocean shimmering in the distance. The following year, she hiked, climbed, and explored alone in the Alaskan backcountry. On these selfdirected excursions, she experimented with various roped climbing techniques, relied on her wooden alpenstock while
38
mountaineer | summer 2022
Jake Shidell, summit guide, and Alma Wegen, "lady" guide, on Mount Rainier, Washington, 1919, courtesy of University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, UW 14003.
crossing snowfields, and logged pages of trip information in her journal. After a transformative summer in Glacier National Park, she set her sights on becoming a mountain guide for the National Parks Service.
Testing her mettle In 1913, Alma joined The Mountaineers to gain the skills required to summit more technical peaks. In 1915, she put her new skills into practice on a Mountaineers outing around Mount Rainier. After completing a 100-mile backpack around the base of the volcano, their trip culminated in a climb to the summit from the north side, a route that wasn’t welldocumented until the thirties. When asked about that challenging climb, Alma said “By that time, I felt that I could climb any mountain that ever reared its head in the air.” Her efforts just two summers later proved her determination. In 1917, Alma participated in the 11th annual summer outing of The Mountaineers. The itinerary, as Alma described in the 1917 Mountaineer annual, was a 240-mile trek in the heart of the North Cascades, marching up “the zig-zag trails, over snow slopes, under the glaring sun.” It was her most ambitious trip to date. The adventurous party not only scaled Mount St. Helens, but they continued on foot to Mount Adams and Mount Hood, summiting both of these peaks as well. Alma recalled reaching the snow-capped peak of Mount Hood, eliciting a feeling like no other. “No one but a mountain
