The Lead Plate on Rainier's North Peak
A letter from Yelm corrects the record: five people had already stood atop Mount Rainier's north peak, and two had left a lead plate and tin reflector on the rock.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Yelm, Wash., July 22, 1894. To the Editor: In yesterday's issue of the Post-Intelligencer, during some remarks following Mr. Everett Smith's report of the Ingraham party's successful ascent to the crater of Mount Rainier, you make a misstatement in regard to the north peak of the mountain. You say, whether on the authority of Mr. Smith or your own authority does not clearly appear from the context, that no one has ever been on top of the north peak. This is an error and does injustice to our successful mountain climbers who reached the summit of that peak two years ago. At least five different persons have been to the top of the north peak. In the summer of 1892 Dr. W. Riley, of Olympia, with two companions reached the top of the north peak, and a short time afterward, in the same season (August, 1892), the late George B. Bayley and the writer climbed and explored the north peak. We stood on the icy apex of the peak, and, before we descended, deposited on the bare rock below Liberty Cap a leaden plate with our names carved on it, and a tin plate reflector wired to the rock. North peak has no crater, as you correctly state; neither has Peak Success, though you mention it as an extinct crater. Hazard Stevens and myself in August, 1870, had the happy privilege of first reaching the summits of Crater peak and Peak Success, and enjoyed the honor, if such it be, of naming them. Maj. Ingraham has now so often accomplished the ascent of Crater peak that I shall be somewhat surprised if he leaves the mountain without mastering the more rarely visited north peak. P. H. Van Trump.
“We stood on the icy apex of the peak, and, before we descended, deposited on the bare rock below Liberty Cap a leaden plate with our names carved on it, and a tin plate reflector wired to the rock.”
Mount Rainier's climbing record was being argued over in the same decade that Seattle was promoting itself as the gateway to the mountain. Today, first-ascent claims and summit registers still matter to climbers, and the question of who gets remembered in a landscape is very much alive.
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