Mount Rainier’s glaciers

August, 2018

The following words are from a wikipedia article about Mount Rainier (with a few edits by me):

“Mount Rainier is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest and the highest mountain in the State of Washington.  It is the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States, with a summit elevation of 14,411 ft (4,392 m).

“Mt. Rainier is a large active stratovolcano.  It is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, and is on the Decade Volcano list. Because of its large amount of glacial ice, Mt. Rainier could produce massive lahars that would threaten the entire Puyallup River valley, and it poses a grave threat to the 3.7 million residents in the Tacoma/Seattle metropolitan areas.”

Note to blog readers:  remember to click on photos here to enlarge them.  Also remember that photos posted on this blog are smaller than the originals; if you want a larger format of any of these photos, just let me know.

This camping trip took place during the last week in August.  Pretty much all of the white stuff you see in the photos below are glaciers since almost all of the snow had melted from the summer’s sun.  Also keep in mind that, even though I have a good zoom lens on my camera and was as close as I could get to the glaciers and still be on a paved road, I was still miles away from the glaciers in these photos.  They are huge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The waterfall in the photo above is also in the photo below.
The waterfall is fed by the glacier in the top center of the photo below.

 

 

 

A winter view of Mount Rainier.

When we locals fly in or out of SeaTac International Airport, we always look for Mount Rainier, and often find the mountain above the clouds, just like in the photo above.  Mount St. Helens is in the distance on the left … in the very far distance in the middle of the photo is Mount Adams … all three mountains are in the State of Washington and all three are active stratovolcanoes.  Mount St. Helens is most notorious for its major 1980 eruption, the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States.

Mount Rainier is known by local native Salishan people as Talol or Tacoma or Tahoma from their words meaning “mother of water”.  Native Puyallup people have long called it Tacoma from their words “ta” meaning “larger” and “Koma” which is their name for Mount Shukshan.  Indeed, Mount Rainier (at 14,411 feet) is substantially larger than Mount Shukshan (elevation slightly over 9,000 feet).  One name used for a long, long time that may be close to the original pronunciation is Tacobeh.

The current name “Rainier” was given by George Vancouver who named it in honor of Rear Admiral Peter Rainier who reportedly never climbed a mountain in his life, was never in the Pacific Northwest, and who never even sailed on the Pacific Ocean.  There has always been a desire by many of us to change the name of this mountain back to one of the original names.

These days, about 10,000 people attempt to climb to the summit each year with only around 50% succeeding and with an average of 2-3 people dying during the attempt each year.  This mountain should not be underestimated.

Below … the view from Seattle looking south to Mount Rainier.  The summit/peak of Mount Rainier is a mere 57 miles (92 km) from the heart of downtown Seattle, and a trifling 42 miles (68 km) from the heart of downtown Tacoma.  We love our mountain.

I found the mountain fascinating and loved my late summer week here, but it’s now time to head home.  I will return of course, and will plan a return trip for early in the spring one of these years … late enough in the spring that the snow has thawed sufficiently so the campgrounds are open, but early enough in the year that the snow is still full on the mountain so I can enjoy Mount Rainier bedecked in all of its white sparkling regalia.