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A mountain legacy

So why is there such a Washington presence on the world’s highest and most dangerous peaks? Simply put, “Washington breeds climbers,” says Jerome Fisher.

August Valentine Kautz, a lieutenant stationed at Fort Steilacoom, tried to climb Rainier in the summer of 1857. The German-born soldier prepared himself by reading the accounts of European alpinists who had climbed Mont Blanc. He and a few soldiers who volunteered for the expedition took along shoes with nails pushed through the soles for the ice-covered portion of the climb of the highest peak of the Cascades. The group made it across a glacier and to a high point, but could see that it was still further to the top. As it was freezing cold and night was imminent, they decided to turn and head for camp, considering their near-summit a success.

While the earliest explorers extolled the stunning views of all the mountains in the range, Rainier remained an obsession. Thirteen years after that first attempt, General Hazard Stevens, son of the first governor of Washington Territory, and his acquaintance, P.B. Van Trump, reached the summit. According to Stevens’s account, published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, they were helped by a farmer named James Longmire and an Indian named Sluiskin.

Stevens and Van Trump reached the top of Rainier on August 17, 1870. It was after 5 p.m., and a storm was blowing in. They had to spend the night on the glacier. What saved them was a steam vent that exhaled warm sulfur breaths into a snow cavern. There they huddled through the night and then raced back to camp during a break in the weather the next morning. They celebrated their return with hot coffee and morsels of marmot, the only creature their Indian guide had managed to trap.

The first Rainier fatality came in July 1897, when Edgar McClure, a professor at the University of Oregon, was on an expedition to measure the exact height of the mountain. Standing on a precarious ledge, a large barometer strapped to his back, he turned to his companions and said, “Don’t come down here; it is too steep.” Those were his last words, according to an article published that year in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, before he lost his balance and fell into a deep ravine.

Still, the popularity of the 14,400-foot mountain grew. A 1911 article in the Chicago Evening Post observed, “The public is just beginning to realize that one of the wonderlands of the world is within the confines of Mount Rainier National Park.” The story noted that in 1906 the park had only 1,786 patrons, but in 1911 was expecting 12,000. Today the park sees about two million visitors annually, about 11,000 of whom try to climb the mountain. Usually only half succeed.

Nowadays, the summer crowds at Rainier tend to drive away the most serious climbers. Consider John Roskelley ’71, who first climbed Rainier when he was a teen. His father was the Outdoors editor at the Spokesman-Review and often brought home books about climbing to review. Roskelley devoured the books and was eager to have his own adventures. So his father signed him up with the Mountaineer club in Spokane. He remembers the day they tackled Rainier. The weather was poor in the morning, and his equipment included his old Boy Scout pack, his dad’s Army sleeping bag, jeans, and a pair of rubber boots. “It took me a few years before I got some decent equipment.”

Roskelley didn’t let a little thing like college get in the way of his mountaineering. His first weekend at WSU, he stayed on campus to study for a test, which he then flunked. “When I got that F, I said to myself, either I’m not supposed to be here over the weekend, or I’m not supposed to be here at all.” From then on, as soon as his classes were over, Roskelley and his climbing buddy, Chris Kopczynski ’71, would head for the mountains. “The whole Northwest was our playground,” he says.

Today, Roskelley makes climbs around the world. In 2003, he climbed Everest with his 20-year-old son, Jess, who set the record as the youngest American to summit the mountain. (WSM, winter 2003-04) And when he’s home, Roskelley climbs everywhere but Rainier. It’s the perfect situation. Thanks to the mountain’s popularity, “everyone neglects the other peaks,” he says.

There’s Mount Baker, all glaciers and views, the massive Mount Adams to the south, and the pyramid-topped Mount Shuksan to the north. Out toward the coast through old-growth forest rest Mount Olympus and the steep slopes of Mount Deception.

The state is covered with mountains and ranges, from the Olympics, east to the Cascades, north to the Selkirks, and south to the Blues. Hiking, climbing, bouldering, snow camping, rock scrambling, back country skiing, or just walking in the woods—-there are dozens of parks and thousands of acres to do all of these things in Washington.

“You can spend your whole life here and be happy,” says Viesturs.

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