Mount Rainier
Interesting facts
- The ice-filled summit craters hold the world’s largest volcanic glacier cave network, with nearly 3.2 km of passages.
- A small lake inside the west summit crater, at about 4,329 metres, is the highest crater lake in North America.
- A 2024 survey found that Columbia Crest, the traditional summit, has melted about 6.6 metres since 1998 and is no longer the highest point.
- Before a huge collapse about 5,000 years ago, the volcano probably stood near 16,000 feet, well over a thousand feet higher than today.
- The present cone is more than 500,000 years old.
- Hazard Stevens and P. B. Van Trump made the first recorded ascent in 1870, and Fay Fuller became the first woman to reach the summit in 1890.
- In 1981 an icefall on the Ingraham Glacier killed ten clients and one guide in a single accident.
- Between 1950 and 2022 nearly 472,000 people attempted to climb the mountain, according to National Park Service figures.
- Little Tahoma, a satellite peak of 11,138 feet, would rank as Washington’s third-highest peak if counted on its own.
- The Washington state quarter, released in 2007, shows Mount Rainier together with a salmon.
Why it is worth it
On a clear day Mount Rainier floats over Seattle and Tacoma like a second horizon; locals simply call it "the Mountain". The volcano rises to about 4,391 metres, and because it stands alone above the lower Cascades it is the most topographically prominent peak in the contiguous United States. It also carries more ice than any other peak in the lower 48 states: 26 major glaciers and more than 90 km² of permanent snow and ice, including the Carbon Glacier, the largest by volume in the contiguous US, and the Emmons Glacier, the largest by area.
Rainier is very much alive. It is on the list of Decade Volcanoes, the handful worldwide judged most dangerous to people, not so much because of lava as because of lahars: fast-moving slurries of mud, rock and meltwater. About 5,000 years ago a collapse of the summit sent the Osceola Mudflow all the way to the Puget Sound lowlands, and the US Geological Survey estimates that about 80,000 people and their homes lie in today's lahar-hazard zones. Pierce County maintains warning sirens and signed evacuation routes in the valleys below. The mountain has some twenty Indigenous names, and one Lushootseed name, anglicised as "Tacoma", competed with the official one for decades; George Vancouver had named it in 1792 after his friend Rear Admiral Peter Rainier.
Mount Rainier National Park, founded in 1899 as the fifth national park in the United States, protects the mountain and its forests. Paradise, at about 1,650 metres on the south slope, is the most visited area, with the historic Paradise Inn of 1916 and the Henry M. Jackson Visitor Center; it is also one of the snowiest places where snowfall is regularly measured, with a record 28.5 metres in the winter of 1971–72. Wildflower meadows peak in July and August. Sunrise, on the northeast side at about 1,950 metres, is the highest point reachable by car and faces the Emmons Glacier head-on. Longmire, a few miles inside the Nisqually Entrance, has a museum, and the Wonderland Trail circles the entire mountain.
Climbing to the summit is a serious glacier ascent: it usually takes two to three days, and only about half of those who try reach the top. The standard route goes via Camp Muir and the Disappointment Cleaver.
Getting there
The mountain is about 95 km south-southeast of Seattle. The nearest sizeable town is Bonney Lake, about 49 km away, and the nearest major airport is Seattle–Tacoma International (SEA), about 78 km away. There is no regular public transport into the park; most visitors drive, reaching Paradise via the Nisqually Entrance near Ashford and Sunrise via State Route 410 and the White River Entrance.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Mount Rainier, also known as Tahoma, is a large, active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. The mountain is located in Mount Rainier National Park about 59 miles (95 km) south-southeast of Seattle. At 14,406 ft (4,391 m) it is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington, the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States, and the tallest in the Cascade Volcanic Arc.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
46.85167, -121.76028per Wikidata