FIRST SUCCESSFUL ASCENT, 1870 



Mr. Van Trump made several ascents after that first one, and in 

 1905 General Stevens also made a second ascent. He searched 

 in vain for the relics he had deposited at the summit thirty- 

 five years earlier. The rocks that were bare in 1870 were under 

 snow and ice in 1905. 



When Vancouver, in 1792, penetrated the Straits 

 of Fuca and explored the unknown waters of the 

 Mediterranean of the Pacific, wherever he sailed, from 

 the Gulf of Georgia to the farthest inlet of Puget 

 Sound, he beheld the lofty, snow-clad barrier range of 

 the Cascades stretching north and south and bound- 

 ing the eastern horizon. Towering at twice the alti- 

 tude of all others, at intervals of a hundred miles there 

 loomed up above the range three majestic, snowy 

 peaks that 



"Like giants stand 

 To sentinel enchanted land/* 



In the matter-of-fact spirit of a British sailor of his 

 time, he named these sublime monuments of nature in 

 honor of three lords of the English admiralty, Hood, 

 Rainier, and Baker. Of these Rainier is the central, 

 situated about half-way between the Columbia River 

 and the line of British Columbia, and is by far the 

 loftiest and largest. Its altitude is 14,444 f eet > while 

 Hood is 11,025 feet, and Baker is 10,810 feet high. 

 The others, too, are single cones, while Rainier, or 

 Takhoma, 1 is an immense mountain-mass with three 

 distinct peaks, an eastern, a northern, and a southern ; 

 the two last extending out and up from the main cen- 

 tral dome, from the summit of which they stand over 

 a mile distant, while they are nearly two miles apart 

 from each other. 



Takhoma overlooks Puget Sound from Olympia to 

 Victoria, one hundred and sixty miles. Its snow-clad 



1 Tak-ho'ma or Ta-ho'ma among the Yakimas, Klickitats, Puyallups, Nis- 

 quallys, and allied tribes of Indians, is the generic term for mountain, used pre- 

 cisely as we use the word "mount," as Takhoma Wynatchie, or Mount Wynatchie. 

 But they all designate Rainier simply as Takhoma, or The Mountain, just as the 

 mountain men used to call it the "Old He." (Note in the original article.) 



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