They Climbed Rainier First—and Slept in a Sulphur-Scented Ice Cave

Mount Rainier was first attempted in the summer of 1857, but it was not until August 1870 that a party reached the top. The first man to make the attempt was Lieut. A. V. Kautz, then stationed at Fort Steilacoom and now retired with the rank of general. He ascended the mountain in July 1857, but did not reach the summit.

The first party to reach the summit left Olympia on August 8, 1870, and was composed of P. B. Van Trump, a resident of Yelm; Gen. Hazard Stevens; and Edward T. Coleman. They reached the top, discovered the craters, and spent the night in the ice caves of the smaller one. In September of the same year a member of a United States geological survey party claimed to have reached the summit, but as he could never give an accurate account of what it looked like, it was generally believed that he never went all the way up.

The following account of the first successful ascent of Mount Rainier appeared in the Daily Pacific Tribune, published at Olympia, Monday, August 8, 1870:

Gen. Hazard Stevens, Mr. P. B. Van Trump and Edward T. Coleman left Olympia on the 8th inst., and proceeded under the guidance of Mr. Longmire, of Prairie, by the old pack trail up the Nisqually River for 100 miles to Bear Prairie, a small marshy opening between the Nisqually and Cowlitz, and about thirty miles south by west of Rainier. This was the nearest point to the railroad, and the trip thus far had been an exceedingly hard and laborious one, taking five days of incessant toil and climbing among fallen logs and thick brush, on a trail almost, and in some places quite, illegible. The tourists were on foot, with pack animals carrying provisions.

After securing a Native guide, Mr. Longmire left the party at Bear Prairie with one pack horse and started home with the others. Taking each about forty pounds of provisions and a blanket, the party started from Bear Prairie and crossed the intervening mountains to the base of Rainier. Mr. Coleman, however, being unable to keep up, left the party soon after the start, returned to Bear Prairie and remained there until their return. The trip across the mountain was one of excessive toil, requiring fourteen hours. The guide followed a general backbone between the Nisqually and Cowlitz, and they were obliged to climb up and down steeps and across lofty ridge after ridge until at length, descending an almost perpendicular steep for 2,000 feet, they reached a southern tributary of the Nisqually, a beautiful, clear stream, and the only one whose waters are not of a milky white hue. They were now at the base of Rainier, which, with the wide-spread spurs occupying the country to the north, presented a panorama of twenty-five to thirty miles across.

The upper half of the mountain is exceedingly steep, almost perpendicular. The lower half is composed of long, gradual, gently sloping ridges radiating from the mountain, with deep valleys between. The upper part of the mountain itself and those ridges is a vast continuous field of snow and ice, while it is broken by rocky peaks. The lower slopes, six or seven miles wide, are beautiful, open and covered with the brightest grass, besprinkled with brilliant flowers, and dotted with groves of trees. Patches and streaks of snow fill the depressions and make a beautiful contrast.

They arrived at the southernmost of the established camps on the edge of the timber line, at the foot of the mountain, and stayed there a day. On Wednesday, the 17th, they started up at 6 a.m. with provisions, an alpine rope, long spikes in their shoes, and woolen blankets. They were over seven hours in getting up the snow fields. At an altitude of about 10,000 feet they came to a narrow, steep ridge of rock. They had to creep along its side, holding on by their hands, and at last reached a point where further progress seemed impossible. The guide and Stevens went ahead, and after some difficult climbing reached the top of the ridge. They then returned for Van Trump, and the party made its way to a point called “Peak Success.” With three cheers they planted their flags aloft in token of their victory. They were just ten and a half hours in making the ascent, during which they toiled hard and were not able to return a single step.

They stood a moment upon that narrow summit, bracing themselves against the furious and biting blast, to view the prospect, but the whole country was covered with a dense sea of smoke, hiding everything except one solitary peak to the southeast (Mount Adams), whose summit, like Rainier’s, loomed above the smoke. Immediately about the mountain, on every side, were deep gorges falling off precipitously thousands of feet, separated by vertical ridges of rock, and each forming the bed of a glacier, which could be seen far below, wrinkled across with countless crevasses. The great field of ice and snow which covered the crown of the mountain overhung these gorges and was continually breaking off in immense masses, which fell with the roar of thunder. The wind was now a perfect tempest and very cold; snow and mist were flying about the base of the mountain, half hiding, half revealing its gigantic outlines, and the whole scene was grand, sublime and awful.

Retracing their steps along the narrow summit of “Peak Success,” the tourists crossed the ice field and ascended the middle peak about one mile distant. This is about 200 feet the highest, and the ascent is up an ice slope. They held to the summit, which is crowned by a rocky ridge. Climbing over this, they found themselves within a circular crater about 200 yards in diameter, filled with a solid bed of snow with a rim of rocks projecting above the snow all around. As they crossed the crater on the snow Mr. Van Trump detected the odor of sulphur, and the next instant numerous jets of steam, hot air and thin smoke were observed issuing from the crevices of the rocks forming the rim on one northern side. Never was a discovery more welcome. Hastening forward, they both exclaimed, as they warmed their thoroughly chilled and benumbed extremities over one of old Pluto’s fires, that here they would pass the night, secure against freezing to death, at least, for it was now 6 o’clock and it would have been impossible to descend the mountain before nightfall.

A deep cavern extending under and into the ice, formed by the action of the heat, was found, and a short distance within its mouth they built a wall of stones, enclosing a space five by six feet around a strong jet of heat and steam. Ensconced within this shelter, they discussed their future prospects while they warmed themselves at their natural register. The heat from the orifice was too great to bear for more than an instant; but the steam wet them, the smell of the sulphur nauseated them, and, in short, they passed a most miserable night, freezing on one side and in a hot sulphur bath on the other. The wind outside roared and whistled, but secure within their cavern it did not much affect them except when an occasional gust came down perpendicularly.

The dawn at length slowly broke, cold and gray, and the tempest howled still wilder. As it grew light dense clouds of snow-driven mist went sweeping by overhead, and completely hid the sun and enveloped the mountain so as to hide objects 100 yards distant. They watched this with great anxiety, fearing a storm which might detain them several days without food or shelter; or, worse yet, snow that would render the descent more perilous, or most likely impossible. And when at 8:30 an occasional rift in the driving mist gave a glimpse of a blue sky, they made haste to descend.

First, however, they deposited the brass plate inscribed with their names (having erased Coleman’s name with the point of a knife) in a cleft of a large boulder on the highest summit, which was a huge mound of rocks on the east side of the crater of refuge, placed the canteen alongside and covered it with a large stone. At 8:30 they left their shelter, after exercising violently to start the blood through their chilled and numbed limbs; and attempting to pass around the rocky summit, on which were deposited the plate and canteen, they discovered a second crater larger than the first, perhaps 200 yards in diameter. It is circular, filled with a bed of snow, with a rocky rim all around, and numerous jets of steam issued from among the rocks. It is separated from the first by a ridge of rocks. Both craters are inclined, the first to the west, and the second, with a much steeper inclination, 30 degrees, to the east.

The rim of the second crater is much higher, or the snow field inside much lower, than that of the first, and on the east side rises in a rocky wall thirty feet higher than the snow within. The ridge between them, on which were deposited the brass plate and canteen, is the highest summit of the mountain. It was named “Crater Peak.” Then the northern peak was named “Peak Tah-ho-ma,” to perpetuate the Native name of the mountain.

The descent was made in the afternoon, and they were until one o’clock in reaching the foot of the rocky ridge where the real difficulties of the ascent commenced. About five hours were consumed in descending; two hours and a half were occupied in ascending. They now struck out joyfully and rapidly down the wide snow fields for their camp. When nearly there, Mr. Van Trump slipped and fell down a snow bank forty feet and struck upon rocks. His face and hands were badly skinned; he received several bruises, and a deep, wide gash in his thigh. With pain he managed to limp to camp. There our tired and famished mountaineers were soon regaling themselves on coffee, slapjacks and venison.

The next day they descended the mountain to its foot, where, leaving Mr. Van Trump in camp, Stevens with the guide pushed on to Bear Prairie. Thinking from the lay of the country that the route by which the guide had led them was somewhat circuitous, and knowing that it was out of the question for Mr. Van Trump to return, he determined to seek a new and better route by following the tributary of the Nisqually to a point where the party had left that river for Bear Prairie. He did so against the urgent remonstrance of the guide, and found a route so much better that he reached Bear Prairie in five and a half hours instead of fourteen hours by the mountains.

Mr. Coleman was found at their old camp here. He said that in attempting to climb up the face of a precipice in ascending the mountain, up which the guide had led them when they started for Bear Prairie, he found it necessary to throw off his pack. It rolled to the very foot of the mountain, and was lost; and as he could not make the ascent of Rainier without the Alpine paraphernalia contained therein, he was obliged to return to camp. Having, however, found some cricketer’s spikes among his remaining effects, he had determined to make the ascent himself, and with that view had spent the last five days in surveying a route and establishing a cache or stock of provisions on the top of a mountain. The following day the guide was sent with a horse for Mr. Van Trump, who succeeded in coming down by the Nisqually River with but three miles of walking, and the others moved over from Bear Prairie to the Nisqually, when the party was once more reunited. They remained here three days during the rain storm of the 20th, 21st and 22d, and then returned to Olympia in four days by the trail they had advanced.

The journey back was without special incident, and they reached the settlement last Friday, after a march of 210 miles in seventeen days, somewhat tired, thoroughly hungry and quite willing to submit to a bath (not a sulphur one this time) and clean suits.

Several other attempts were made, but not until August 6, 1883, was the wonderful feat again accomplished, when George B. Bayley, a well-known California mountain climber, James Longmire and P. B. Van Trump, of Yelm, spent a night in the small crater. Van Trump found that a great many changes in the appearance of the mountain and the craters had taken place in the thirteen years that had intervened between his two ascents. For five more years the summit was not reached, until in 1888 a party led by Maj. E. S. Ingraham made a successful ascent. This party was composed of the major, John Muir, the famous mountain climber and author of “Picturesque California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska,” and after whom Muir Glacier was named, P. B. Van Trump, N. O. Booth, Charles V. Piper, Daniel Waldo Bass and O. P. Warner, all of Seattle.

In August 1889, Mr. Gove of the Oregon Alpine Club and J. Nichol of Tacoma climbed the mountain and slept one night in the big crater. Oscar Brown, of Enumclaw, climbed to the top on July 13, 1890, carrying an American flag about twelve feet square, and also packed along a flagstaff of Alaska cedar. He planted the staff in the snow and fastened the flag to the top. He was on top about an hour. In August 1890, a party composed of Rev. C. Smith, W. O. Arnsden of Seattle, R. R. Parrish of Portland, Leonard Longmire of Yelm and Miss Fay Fuller of Tacoma reached the top and remained that night in one of the ice caves in the crater. Miss Fuller was the first woman to reach the summit of the mountain.

Maj. Ingraham now has the record of having been on the mountain seven times, and three times reached the top. He has been twice on Mount Baker and once reached the summit.