The impression still prevails in many quarters that true glaciers, such as are found in the Swiss Alps, do not exist within the confines of the United States, and that to behold one of these rare scenic features one must go to Switzerland, or else to the less accessible Canadian Rockies or the inhospitable Alaskan coast. As a matter of fact, permanent bodies of snow and ice, large enough to deserve the name of glaciers, occur on many of our western mountain chains, notably in the Rocky Mountains, where only recently a national reservation—Glacier National Park—was named for its ice fields; in the Sierra Nevada of California, and farther north, in the Cascade Range. It is on the last-named mountain chain that glaciers especially abound, clustering as a rule in groups about the higher summits of the crest. But this range also supports a series of huge, extinct volcanoes that tower high above its sky line in the form of isolated cones. On these the snows lie deepest and the glaciers reach their grandest development. Ice clad from head to foot the year round, these giant peaks have become known the country over as the noblest landmarks of the Pacific Northwest. Foremost among them are Mount Shasta, in California (14,162 feet); Mount Hood, in Oregon (11,225 feet); Mount St. Helens (9,697 feet), Mount Adams (12,307 feet), Mount Rainier (14,408 feet), and Mount Baker (10,730 feet), in the State of Washington.
Easily king of all is Mount Rainier. Almost 250 feet higher than Mount Shasta, its nearest rival in grandeur and in mass, it is overwhelmingly impressive, both by the vastness of its glacial mantle and by the striking sculpture of its cliffs. The total area of its glaciers amounts to no less than 45 square miles, an expanse of ice far exceeding that of any other single peak in the United States. Many of its individual ice streams are between 4 and 6 miles long and vie in magnitude and in splendor with the most boasted glaciers of the Alps. Cascading from the summit in all directions, they radiate like the arms of a great starfish. All reach down to the foot of the mountain and some advance considerably beyond.
As for the plea that these glaciers lie in a scarcely opened, out-of-the-way region, a forbidding wilderness as compared with maturely civilized Switzerland, it no longer has the force it once possessed. Rainier's ice fields can now be reached from Seattle or Tacoma, the two principal cities of western Washington, in a comfortable day's journeying, either by rail or by automobile. The cooling sight of crevassed glaciers and the exhilarating flower-scented air of alpine meadows need no longer be exclusive pleasures, to be gained only by a trip abroad.
Mount Rainier stands on the west edge of the Cascade Range, overlooking the lowlands that stretch to Puget Sound. Seen from Seattle or Tacoma, 60 and 50 miles distant, respectively, it appears to rise directly from sea level, so insignificant seem the ridges about its base. Yet these ridges themselves are of no mean height. They rise 3,000 to 4,000 feet above the valleys that cut through them, and their crests average 6,000 feet in altitude. Thus at the southwest entrance of the park, in the Nisqually Valley, the elevation above sea level, as determined by accurate spirit leveling, is 2,003 feet, while Mount Wow (Goat Mountain), immediately to the north, rises to an altitude of 6,045 feet. But so colossal are the proportions of the great volcano that they dwarf even mountains of this size and give them the appearance of mere foothills. In the Tatoosh Range Pinnacle Peak is one of the higher summits, 6,562 feet in altitude. That peak rises nearly 4,000 feet above the Nisqually River, which at Longmire has an elevation of 2,700 feet, yet it will be seen that Mount Rainier towers still 7,846 feet higher than Pinnacle Peak.
From the top of the volcano one fairly looks down upon the Tatoosh Range, to the south; upon Mount Wow, to the southwest; upon the Mother Mountains, to the northwest, indeed, upon all the ridges of the Cascade Range. Only Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Hood loom like solitary peaks above the even sky line, while the ridges below this line seem to melt together in one vast, continuous mountain platform. And such a platform, indeed, one should conceive the Cascade Range once to have been. Only it is now thoroughly dissected by profound, ramifying valleys, and has been resolved into a sea of wavelike crests and peaks.
Mount Rainier stands, in round numbers, 10,000 feet high above its immediate base, and covers 100 square miles of territory, or one-third of the area of Mount Rainier National Park. In shape it is not a simple cone tapering to a slender, pointed summit like Fuji Yama, the great volcano of Japan. It is, rather, a broadly truncated mass resembling an enormous tree stump with spreading base and irregularly broken top. Its life history has been a varied one. Like all volcanoes, Rainier has built up its cone with the material ejected by its own eruptions—with cinders and bombs (steam-shredded particles and lumps of lava), and with occasional flows of liquid lava that have solidified into layers of hard, basaltic rock. At one time it attained an altitude of not less than 16,000 feet, if one may judge by the steep inclination of the lava and cinder layers visible in its flanks. Then a great explosion followed that destroyed the top part of the mountain, and reduced its height by some 2,000 feet. The volcano was left beheaded, and with a capacious hollow crater, surrounded by a jagged rim.
Later on this great cavity, which measured nearly 3 miles across, from south to north, was filled by two small cinder cones. Successive feeble eruptions added to their height until at last they formed together a low, rounded dome—the eminence that now constitutes the mountain's summit. It rises only about 400 feet above the rim of the old crater, and is an inconspicuous feature, not readily identifiable from all sides as the highest point. In fact, so broad is the mountain's crown that from no point at its base can one see the top. The higher portions of the old crater rim, moreover, rise to elevations within a few hundred feet of the summit, and, especially when viewed from below, stand out boldly as separate peaks that mask and seem to overshadow the central dome. Especially prominent are Peak Success (14,150 feet) on the southwest side, and Liberty Cap (14,112 feet) on the northwest side.
The altitude of the main summit has for many years been in doubt. Several figures have been announced from time to time, no two of them in agreement with each other; but all of these, it is to be observed, were obtained by more or less approximate methods. In 1913 the United States Geological Survey, in connection with its topographic surveys of the Mount Rainier National Park, was able to make a new series of measurements by triangulation methods at close range. These give the peak an elevation of 14,408 feet, thus placing it near the top of the list of high summits of the United States. This last figure, it should be added, is not likely to be in error by more than a foot or two and may with some confidence be regarded as final. Greater exactness of determination is scarcely practicable in the case of Mount Rainier, as its highest summit consists actually of a mound of snow the height of which naturally varies somewhat with the seasons and from year to year.
This crowning snow mound, which was once supposed to be the highest point in the United States, still bears the proud name of Columbia Crest. It is essentially a huge snowdrift or snow dune, heaped up by the westerly winds. Driving furiously up through the great breach in the west flank of the mountain, between Peak Success and Liberty Cap, they eddy lightly as they shoot over the summit and there deposit their load of snow.
The drift is situated at the point where the rims of the two summit craters touch, and represents the only permanent snow mass on these rims, for some of the internal heat of the volcano still remains and suffices to keep these rock-crowned curving ridges bare of snow the better part of the year. It is intense enough, even, to produce numerous steam jets along the inner face of the rim of the east crater, which appears to be the most recently formed of the two. The center of this depression, however, is filled with snow, so that it has the appearance of a shallow, white-floored bowl some 1,200 feet in diameter. Great caverns are melted out by the steam jets under the edges of the snow mass, and these caverns afford shelters which, though uninviting, are not to be despised. They have proved a blessing to more than one party that has found itself compelled to remain overnight on the summit, saving them from death in the icy gales.