The largest and most elevated of the ice fields east of Little Tahoma is known for its peculiar shape as Fryingpan Glacier. It covers fully 3 square miles of ground and constitutes the most extensive and most beautiful interglacier on Mount Rainier. It originates in the hollow east side of Little Tahoma itself and descends rapidly northward, overlooking the great Emmons Glacier and finally reaching down almost to its level. It is not a long time since the two ice bodies were confluent.
The eastern portion of the Fryingpan Glacier drains northeastward and sends forth several cascading torrents which, uniting with others coming from the lesser ice fields to the east, form the Fryingpan River, a brisk stream that joins White River several miles farther north.
Below the Fryingpan Glacier there lies a region of charming flower-dotted meadows named Summerland, a most attractive spot for camping.
Cloaking almost the entire east side of Mount Rainier is the Emmons Glacier, the most extensive ice stream on the peak (named after Samuel F. Emmons, the geologist and mountaineer who was the second to conquer the peak in 1870). About 5½ miles long and 1¾ miles wide in its upper half, it covers almost 8 square miles of territory. It makes a continuous descent from the summit to the base, the rim of the old crater having almost completely broken down under its heavy névé cascades. But two small remnants of the rim still protrude through the ice and divide it into three cascades. From each of these dark rock islands trails a long medial moraine that extends in an ever-broadening band down to the foot of the glacier.
Conspicuous lateral moraines accompany the ice stream on each side. There are several parallel ridges of this sort, disposed in successive tiers above each other on the valley sides. Most impressively do they attest the extent of the Emmons Glacier's recent shrinking. The youngest moraine, fresh looking as if deposited only yesterday, lies but 50 feet above the glacier's surface and a scant 100 feet distant from its edge; the older ridges, subdued in outline, and already tinged with verdure, lie several hundred feet higher on the slope.
The Emmons Glacier, like the Nisqually and the Cowlitz, becomes densely littered with morainal débris at its lower end, maintaining, however, for a considerable distance a central lane of clear ice. The stream which it sends forth, White River, is the largest of all the ice-fed streams radiating from the peak. It flows northward and then turns in a northwesterly direction, emptying finally in Puget Sound at the city of Seattle.
On the northeast side of the mountain, descending from the same high névés as the Emmons Glacier, is the Winthrop Glacier. Not until halfway down, at an elevation of about 10,000 feet, does it detach itself as a separate ice stream. The division takes place at the apex of that great triangular interspace so aptly named "the Wedge." Upon its sharp cliff edge, Steamboat Prow, the descending névés part, it has been said, like swift-flowing waters upon the dividing bow of a ship at anchor. The simile is an excellent one; even the long foam crest, rising along the ship's side, is represented by a wave of ice.
Undoubtedly the Wedge formerly headed much higher up on the mountain's flank. Perhaps it extended upward in the form of a long, attenuated "cleaver." It is easy to see how the ice masses impinging upon it have reduced it to successively lower levels. They are still unrelentingly at work. It is on the back of the Wedge, it may be added here, that is situated that small ice body which Maj. Ingraham named the "Interglacier." That name has since been applied in a generic sense to all similar ice bodies lying on the backs of "wedges."
Of greatest interest on the Winthrop Glacier are the ice cascades and domes. Evidently the glacier's bed is a very uneven one, giving rise to falls and pools, such as one observes in a turbulent trout stream. The cascades explain themselves readily enough, but the domes require a word of interpretation. They are underlain by rounded bosses of especially resistant rock. Over these the ice is lifted, much as is the water of a swift mountain torrent over submerged bowlders. Immediately above each obstruction the ice appears compact and free from crevasses, but as it reaches the top and begins to pour over it breaks, and a network of intersecting cracks divides it into erect, angular blocks and fantastic obelisks. Below each dome there is, as a rule, a deep hollow partly inclosed by trailing ice ridges, analogous to the whirling eddy that occurs normally below a bowlder in a brook. Thus does a glacier simulate a stream of water even in its minor details.
The domes of the Winthrop Glacier measure 50 to 60 feet in height. A sample of the kind of obstruction that produces them appears, as if specially provided to satisfy human curiosity, near the terminus of the glacier. There one may see, close to the west wall of the troughlike bed, a projecting rock mass, rounded and smoothly polished, over which the glacier rode but a short time ago.