About the Washington Mountain Rescue Association

“Working on behalf of the Mountain Rescue Association units of Washington State”

The Washington Region is one of 9 regions making up the MRA. The Washington Region consists of nine regular member teams and four ex-officio teams. The Washington State MRA history extends back to the inception of the Mountain Rescue Association in 1959 when teams from Washington and Oregon came together to establish the national organization, including Everett, Seattle, and Central Washington Mountain Rescue. Today, the MRA has expanded to include mountain rescue teams throughout the nation.

Many of these units are part of or represent their county SAR organizations, while some are standalone organizations supporting their corner of the state. In Washington, there are currently nine fully accredited MRA teams that provide rescue services across the entire state.

Washington MRA members are diverse and varied like many MRA personnel across the country, and come from all walks of life including medical providers, medics, fire fighters, alpine guides and instructors, professional athletes, ski patrollers, teachers, law enforcement, engineers, pilots, software designers, researchers, accountants, real estate agents, and more. Each unit is unique and has its own history and legacy to both the region and the international rescue and alpine communities. These teams have members who have represented the region nationally as MRA Committee and Board Members, globally as delegates of the International Commission of Alpine Rescue (ICAR), and led in research and standard practice advancement in technical rescue rigging, among other accomplishments.

The WAMRA continues to advanced expertise in the fields of technical rope rescue, glacier/avalanche rescue, and wilderness search; often supporting the National Park Service with complex searches, rescues, and recoveries on the states many volcanoes. Teams also often support each other with mutual-aid mission assistance, especially throughout the Cascades and along the portions of the Pacific Crest Trail that extend through the state. Missions are often complex, occurring in terrain complicated by swift water, the state’s vast stretches of rocky cliffs, and year-round snow fields. The members of the WAMRA serve the region and each other twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, in all weather conditions and across any terrain. These dedicated individuals serve for spans between a few years to as long as six decades, and do so in the company of some of the MRA’s finest rescuers.