Phil Powers is a Senior Partner with Brimstone Consulting Group. His background spans thirty years of not-for-profit leadership through owning and operating his own business – The Mountain Guides – since 1998. 

Powers has led dozens of expeditions to South America, Alaska and Pakistan’s Karakoram Range. Successes include ascents of K2 and Gasherbrum II without supplemental oxygen and seven ascents of South America’s highest peak, Aconcagua. He made the first ascent of the Washburn Face on Denali, the first ascent of Lukpilla Brakk’s Western Edge in Pakistan, and completed the first winter traverse of the Tetons’ Cathedral Peaks 

Powers is the author of Wilderness Mountaineering and Climbing: Expedition Planning. His essay, “The Importance of Pace,” was aired on NPR’s “This I Believe” in 2006 and was released in book compiling the highlights from that series. 

He served on the boards of the American Mountain Guides Association, the Access Fund, the Colorado University Altitude Research Center, the Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum and as a member of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Advisory Group. He is currently on the board of Ascend Athletics and is the North American representative to the International Union of Alpine Organizations (UIAA) as a member of the Management Committee. 

He is the recipient of the American Mountain Foundation’s VIIth Grade Award; the AAC Mountaineering Fellowship Grant; the Mug’s Stump Climbing Grant; and the Wilderness Education Association’s Paul Petzoldt Award for Excellence in Outdoor Education (2007). He received the American Alpine Clubs highest award for service, the Heilprin Award, in 2012. 

He served as the CEO of the American Alpine Club from 2005 to 2020. He continues to own and operate The Mountain Guides, which operates five mountain climbing schools in the American West. 

Still an active skier and climber, he and his wife split their time between a home in Vermont and their Yurt in Kelly, Wyoming.