Mount Rainier

Where is Mount Rainier?

Mount Rainier is part of the Cascade Range.

You will find it in: the United States.

Summit: 46.852° N, 121.760° W

The story behind it

Mount Rainier rises by itself above the forests of Washington State, so large that it makes weather of its own. The United States Geological Survey counts about 26 glaciers on it and says it holds more than five times the glacier area of all the other Cascade volcanoes put together. The Emmons Glacier covers the biggest area, and the Carbon Glacier reaches further down the mountain than any other glacier in the lower 48 states. Puyallup people and their neighbours who speak Lushootseed call the mountain təqʷubəʔ, written in English as Tahoma or Tacoma and usually explained as snow-covered mountain; another recorded name, xʷaq̓ʷ, is translated as sky wiper. Hazard Stevens and Philemon Beecher Van Trump made the first recorded ascent in 1870, guided towards the peak by Sluiskin, a Yakama man who tried to talk them out of it; the park around the mountain was created in 1899. Sources disagree about the last eruption: the Smithsonian lists about 1450, the United States Geological Survey puts the last magmatic eruption roughly a thousand years ago, and reports of activity between 1820 and 1854 are hard to check. The height is moving too: the official figure is about 4 392 metres, but as the summit ice melts, the highest bare rock on the crater rim now measures slightly less than the old ice-covered top.

Find it on the globe

Mount Rainier is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.