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Kat heard the conventional advice to prove her worth by climbing high mountains – but she ended up ditching the toxic culture to pursue true leadership instead.
Kat Schaumberg began her career in outdoor education at 18 and went on to work as a mountain guide, instructor, and logistics coordinator for organizations including Outward Bound, Inspiring Girls Expeditions, the American Alpine Institute, and AWExpeditions. She’s spent hundreds of days on expeditions across Alaska, Yosemite, Patagonia, Ecuador, and Nepal, and has been featured in Climbing Magazine writing about the vulnerabilities of being a female guide in a male-dominated space.
Kat holds certifications in massage therapy and abdominal therapy and has studied with herbalist and healer Rosita Arvigo in Belize. She also co-founded the Mossy Mentors, a forest school that served over 150 children in its first year, and recently completed a two-year, 10,000-mile sailing journey around the Northeast Pacific.
Kat and Angie talked about:
- Getting hired at guiding companies and feeling treated as less competent than male coworkers
- What it meant to be a “marketable female guide”: the pressure to be strong, charismatic, likable, and professional all at once — while suppressing her personal self
- A trifecta of traumas that ended her full-time guiding career and sent her toward healing
- Bringing bodywork and somatic awareness into expedition guiding
- The menstrual cycle and outdoor adventure
- Co-founding a forest school and completing a two-year, 10,000-mile sailing journey: “always lead with the lungs, follow with the feet”
Check out these resources:
- 🌐 Kat’s massage therapy website
- 🎬 Kat and her fiancé’s sailing vlog on YouTube
- 📱 Kat on IG: @alpine_kat
- ➡️ The Cairn Project on IG
- ✨ The Cairn Project’s newsletter
- 🥾 Become a Trailblazer
- 📅Summit Scholarship Foundation
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You can help us close the gender gap outdoors and beyond:
- Become a Trailblazer. Your Adventure Fundraiser makes wilderness experiences possible for girls and women.
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The Cairn Project
Mobilizing to empower young women in the outdoors through grantmaking.