Sierra Club Bulletin 



Vol. IX San Francisco, June, 1913 No. 2 



THE MOUNTAINEERS' WINTER OUTING ON 

 MT. RAINIER. 



By Lulie Nettleton. 



Since snow, fluffy, exhilarating, real snow does not come to 

 Seattle, Seattlites must seek the snow. Consequently it has be- 

 come the annual custom for the Mountaineers to go back into 

 the hills and spend New Year's enjoying winter sports usually 

 confined to colder lands. Particularly elaborate preparations 

 were made for the winter outing of 1912 to Mt. Rainier, for 

 this was the first opportunity the majority of us had ever had 

 of viewing our great mountain at close range in the grasp, of 

 winter. The Seattle-Everett party left Seattle in a special car 

 7 120 A. M., December 28th, and were joined in Tacoma by a 

 delegation from that city. 



Midday found us at Ashford anxiously viewing several rather 

 dubious-looking sleighs drawn up at the little station. Since 

 a sleigh ride is an almost unknown quantity on Puget 

 we hailed even poor sleds as a luxury. Our start was quite as 

 we had anticipated ; the bells were merry, the road white and 

 soft, the woods an exquisite crystal palace, the air like wine, — 

 in short, all the stage-settings were perfect for a sleigh-ride of 

 song and story. There was just one flaw, and that was the 

 sleighs themselves. They proved to be of such delicate con- 

 struction that we soon resorted to our own feet as more depend- 

 able, and walked to Messler's, a distance of five miles. There a 

 hot lunch fortified us for the nine miles that lay between, us 

 and the National Park Inn at Longmire's Springs. 



The imposing entrance to the Rainier National Park Ayas 

 passed early in the afternoon, appearing doubly impressive with 

 its white cornice of snow. The office of the Park Superinten- 

 dent, on the contrary, seemed to have lost its summer dignity 

 and peeped at us from its cozy nest of snow, like a Santa Claus 

 house in a shop window. 



The snow upon the road lay about three feet deep . and was 

 very soft, so strong men broke the trail and the rest "came 



