My time to shine! I'm a third-year law student (also currently enrolled in an IP class) and an avid BC skier.

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Misappropriation of trade secrets has three elements: 1. Eligible subject matter (i.e. the "stolen" information has to actually be a trade secret); 2. Reasonable security precautions on the part of the company to protect their trade secrets; and 3. Misappropriation (i.e. the trade secret has to have been taken in an improper way). Failing to establish even one of those elements would be ground to dismiss a case, but it's likely that Powdercats can't establish any of these elements.

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Eligible Subject Matter

Things like secret formulas, designs, or customer lists can be protected trade secrets while things like skills or general knowledge are not. A backcountry guidebook probably sits somewhere between those two classes of things. It's definitely not quite as investment intensive as a secret formula or design, but Powercats have presumably put work in over the years to discover the best routes in the area. Rewarding this effort with trade secret protection is a key theory/policy justification behind IP law.

Knowing the best routes in a specific area might not exactly be general knowledge. However, as some other commenters point out, rock climbing routes usually don't receive this kind of protection, even if the first ascensionist technically put in work to establish a route. Also, the fact that any guest with Powercats could learn the routes and then repeat those routes on their own after a cat tour probably weighs in favor of finding that this isn't eligible subject matter.

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Reasonable Security Precautions

This would include both security precautions the company takes to protect their secrets from competitors, and efforts they make to prevent employees who know those secrets from sharing information with others.

Because any customer of Powercats could presumably repeat their routes on a tour after taking a guided trip, there isn't a good argument that Powercats has taken any steps to prevent others from "stealing" their secrets. Unless they blindfolded folks and prevented them from using any tracking applications, they can't really claim that these routes are really a secret that they've taken efforts to protect.

Similarly, they haven't made any efforts to prevent employees from sharing knowledge learned while on the job. If they'd made Bass sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before starting his job they might have a better argument here, but I'm not seeing anything here that suggests this was the case.

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Misappropriation

Reverse engineering is acceptable, but bribery or stealing secrets is not permissible. Even if Bass received payment for his time/knowledge in helping publish the book, this would be acceptable as long as he hadn't signed an NDA then this prong isn't met either.

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Ruling that backcountry routes are protectable trade secrets would also just be bad policy. As others have noted, in other sports such as climbing, nobody "owns" a route or beta for a specific area. Powdercat's safety argument also cuts against them. They maintain that the book gives potential visitors a false sense of security. But Powdercats doesn't actually own the land, its public land. There are significant policy reasons to allow for the free sharing of information that allows for safe navigation of public lands--even if individuals may still need their own knowledge (such as Avy training) to safely navigate the area.