Alpinist, Engineer, Family Man, Free Spirit, President of the American Alpine Club; Seattle, Washington

The Seattle native (born and raised) Steve Swenson, 55, is the quintessential Northwest hardman. His climbing career spans four decades and includes the second ascent of the North Face of Mount Alberta, in 1981; the FA of the Northeast Face of Kwangde Nup, in Nepal, in 1989; and the FA of the Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat, in 2004. He’s also summitted K2 (1990, via the North Ridge) and Everest (solo, in 1994), both sans oxygen. Swenson’s select list of gnarly mountain bids occupies three pages of small, single-spaced type, all amassed while he worked 30-plus years as an engineer for R.W. Beck, Inc., of which he’s part owner, and raised two boys — Lars, 28, and Jed, 18 — with his wife, Anne. Swenson’s partners have included Doug Chabot, Colin Haley, Steve House, Alex Lowe,

George Lowe, and Mark Richey. In February, the American Alpine Club (AAC; americanalpineclub.org) appointed Swenson president following his three-year stint as vice president, under Jim Donini. 

I was drawn to climbing in the third or fourth grade. My parents weren’t drawn to the outdoors — they were very religious. To go out on the weekends and climb and not go to church was a big deal. 

When I was in my 20s, there was no such thing as sponsored climbers. You had to make money; you had to support yourself. I do environmental water-resource engineering work — water-quality and fish-habitat stuff. 

My wife gets asked questions all the time, oftentimes by other women. They’ll say, “What do you think of Steve being gone all the time?” And I think she gets tired of that. Somebody asked her that question once and she just said, “Fish gotta swim, Steve’s gotta climb.”