We mosey on down the road with Granpa jumping out for photo ops, and me not wanting to because folks wouldn't know it was the snow that wet my pants and not me.
God is a pretty good florist, huh? Must have been when His feminine side was dominant.
Then Granpa comes up with our first good look at the summit.
Kinda pretty. Mount Rainier is the highest mountain in Washington state and in the Cascade Mountain range. It has 26 glaciers and 36 square miles of snow fields like you see in the foreground of the photo. It can easily be seen from as far away as Seattle and, on really clear days, from Portland, Oregon. At 14,411 feet it is a favorite place for mountain climbers, and it is the most heavily glaciated mountain in the lower 48 states.
Mount Rainier is a stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc. The most recent eruption was 1854, but activity has been reported as recently as 1894. It she blows again it would be really, really bad because of all the glaciers. They will turn into a lahar (volcanic mudflow) that would immediately impact the homes of 150,000 residents and could result in a tsunami in Puget Sound around Seattle. Therefore, there are lahar sirens and posted evacuation routes. (How come I find all of this out AFTER we visited?)
This was home to American Indian tribes such as the Nisqually, Cowlitz, Yakama, Payallup and Muckleshoot. In 1792, Captain George Vancouver sailed into Puget Sound and became the first European to see the mountain, subsequently naming it in honor of his friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier.
The summit was first climbed in 1870, and John Muir climbed it in 1888. About two deaths a year occur among mountaineers attempting to summit these peaks because of rock and ice falls, avalanche, hypothermia, and climbers falling. In 2012, one park ranger lost his life in a rescue attempt during a storm. The ranger lost his footing while trying to help load climbers into a helicopter and slid 3700 feet to his death. Needless to say, Granpa and I aren't doing any summit attempts today!
Mount Rainier became America's fifth national park in 1899 thanks to President McKinley.
There are earthquake swarms all the time on the mountain as a result of hot volcanic fluids moving around inside the mountain. (That's kinda creepy!) But these swarms aren't necessarily an indication of imminent eruption (Whew!)
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| Granpa is a flower-guy photographer, too. |
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