Six Men Climbed a Smoking Rainier in Midwinter

The expedition sent out by the Post-Intelligencer on December 17 to ascertain the condition of Mount Rainier — the snow-clad peak of the Cascades which towers 15,000 feet above sea level some sixty miles south of Seattle — has confirmed the belief that this, the only live volcano in the United States proper, has broken out into unusual activity during the present winter.

The party's observations were minute and demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the mountain had lately been in eruption, though not in a way to cause the tremendous avalanches that have swept bare portions of its north side. Mount Rainier has long been known as a smouldering volcano, but that fact does not explain its recent unusual activity. Maj. E. S. Ingraham, leader of the expedition, said the avalanches were in no way connected with an eruption but were due to the great accumulation of snow upon the mountain. The rough surface of the ice and rock had not afforded sufficient foothold for snow, and the avalanches were the inevitable result.

Mount Rainier first gave evidence of disturbance on November 24 last, when, even from Seattle, thousands of people saw smoke and steam rising from the summit. To add to the strangeness of the phenomenon, the entire side of the mountain appeared bare and depressed, as if a tremendous cave-in had occurred. Interest was multiplied by several slight but distinct earthquake shocks in the Puget Sound country, and many nervous people prophesied that Seattle would be destroyed as Pompeii was by Vesuvius.

The Post-Intelligencer decided to send an exploring expedition to ascertain the exact nature of the disturbances. Maj. Ingraham, a veteran mountain climber who had ascended Rainier six times and Mount Baker twice, selected E. Coke Hill, George Russell, R. H. Boyd and Dr. L. M. Lessey, with William M. Sheffield as correspondent. Hill was a young Seattle lawyer and former champion long-distance runner at Berkeley; Russell and Boyd were members of the Seattle Athletic Club football team; Dr. Lessey had twice reached the summit.

Each man was provided with oiled clothing, heavy woolens, moccasins, snowshoes, alpenstocks and scientific instruments. The party carried a toboggan, provisions and seven homing pigeons, the only means of communication with the outside world. They left Seattle on December 17, stopped at Puyallup, then reached Wilkeson, thirty miles away, the same evening. From Wilkeson they began the winter tramp through trackless forest up the Carbon River.

At Wilkeson the miners shook their heads when the expedition's purpose was explained. When the six men filed over the fir-clad hill above the town, following the rough trail into the mountains, it looked to onlookers more like a funeral procession than an exploring party.

The first night's camp was at Carbon River, after only eleven miles. The packers declared that horses could go no farther. In the morning the men arranged seventy-pound packs and followed the river bed. They forded the icy stream twenty-three times that day. About three o'clock they reached a place where the river narrowed and deepened into a canyon that seemed impassable. Maj. Ingraham, with a camp ax and a short rope, cut a trail through underbrush on the face of the bluff and the party passed to open ground.

One of the pigeons was liberated from a box and soared away in broad view. It was later learned that the bird reached home, a distance of about forty-three miles, in an hour. Wet and tired, the men kept on. Darkness overtook them without a camping place; they found a clump of tall firs on an island and made camp, though they had no dry wood and no light. They supped on hardtack and bologna sausage and slept well despite their wet clothing.

The next morning they found a dead log of Alaska cedar, started a fire and had breakfast. One of the boys cut an inscription in a cottonwood tree naming the place 'Dismal Camp.' Each day's tramp resembled the last in hardship as they ascended the river. Near Canada Creek they found a log cabin used by knife prospectors, and there passed the most comfortable night of the trip. On December 31 they made camp in a grove of cottonwoods on the river bed. The thermometer stood near zero, and by morning the snow was deep enough to require snowshoes. The toboggan had to be unloaded at fordings, carried across on the men's shoulders and reloaded.

Game tracks — deer, bear, mountain goat and rabbit — were everywhere in the new snow, but the party pushed on. At last, at daylight, a man threw off his blanket and shouted: 'The mountain! The glacier!' Looking east, the canyon ended abruptly and between a rift in the mountains Mount Rainier towered almost to the sky. The Carbon Glacier extended from Liberty Cap downward toward them. At its base the mountain broadened into great valleys of eternal snow and ice. The scene looked like the work of another race, with cliffs of white, black and deep blue ice. There was no sound but the wind.

The glacier ended abruptly where two mountains met. At that point it presented an almost perpendicular front of snow-white ice, several hundred feet high and 300 yards wide. Near the center was a great cave, its mouth an oval, from which the Carbon River burst with a rush and roar. The cave was about 100 feet wide, fifty feet high and 200 feet deep; inside the roof arched like an ancient cathedral. The noise of the water was deafening.

After a hasty meal another pigeon was released, carrying a message wired to its tail. The party then climbed to the base of the glacier and, after an hour's persistent work, reached a point from which a better view of the summit could be had. Liberty Cap did not appear over 500 yards away, but the major assured them that the snowy whiteness was deceptive; the glacier itself was five miles long and the summit fully ten miles away. In the dead silence the solitude seemed strange.

About ten feet of newly fallen snow made snowshoes necessary. As the men went up the glacier they avoided crevasses and made their way around cliffs of ice thrown up by avalanches. Near the southern side of the glacier they found that when they called to one another it seemed a hundred voices answered. The major said: 'The Echo Cliffs.' The cliffs were about 500 feet high and half a mile long, and the echo was remarkably distinct, giving a perfect echo of four words.

About noon the top of the mountain became obscured and the party was overtaken by a severe snowstorm. They labored to reach timberline on the left side of the glacier. For four hours they worked assiduously, but there was no timber in sight and it was next to impossible to see twenty feet ahead. Almost at dark Dr. Lessey, who was in the lead, reached the top of a 300-foot hummock and shouted: 'Timber is below us!' About 600 or 800 feet beneath them, at a steep angle, was a little group of fir and pine trees. They slid down on their snowshoes and sought shelter.

Darkness came almost immediately and the wind began to howl. Chilled to the bone, they dug a level place in the snow under the trees and tried to shield themselves. The major found enough wood to start a fire and a brief meal was prepared. Sleep was out of the question. They wrapped blankets around themselves and tried to imagine they were in warm hotels. Two members suffered intensely. Boyd, the largest man, six feet six inches tall and weighing 225 pounds, felt the cold more keenly than the rest; because he had been familiarly called the 'Congo Giant,' the place was named 'Camp of the Congo's Shivers.' For over two hours a solitary half-frozen timber wolf howled nearby, while avalanches crashed down the mountain.

At daybreak the clouds disappeared. The camp proved to be on a kind of island, and the little clump of trees was the only timber at that height within 500 feet. The altitude was 5,500 feet. As soon as possible the men started toward the mountain proper. They could see plainly where mighty avalanches had come down and changed the contour of the north side of Mount Rainier. The north side was bare and the rough canyon was almost perpendicular.

It did not occur to the explorers at first that it was Christmas. They were too much occupied with the difficulties of the ascent. At noon on that day the party had succeeded in crossing the glacier and reaching the base of the summit valley.