Mount Rainier is circled by the Wonderland Trail and is covered by glaciers and snowfields totaling about 35 square miles (91 km2). Carbon Glacier is the largest glacier by volume in the contiguous United States, while Emmons Glacier is the largest glacier by area.
The park was established on March 2, 1899 as the fifth national park in the United States, preserving 236,381 acres
Mount Rainier is massive, a massive volcano. It’s covered by 25 major glaciers and numerous unnamed snow / ice patches. At 14,410ft elevation you can see it from Seattle which is about 60 miles away as the raven flies. We packed some Pizza Pi Vegan Pizza and Mighty-O Vegan Donuts for this alpine adventure. My wife crossed her first glacier on this trip. It was steep with a drop off at the bottom if you fell. You probably wouldn’t die if you fell but you could get pretty beat up. It was a bit unnerving. We brought crampons but I didn’t think we’d be hitting anything this steep so we didn’t pack ice axes. An adventurous family with younger kids about 11, 8, and 5 were also doing this section and they were completely unprepared. The five year old was carried across, the eight year old did splendid and the eleven year old cried the entire way. It took all of us about 30 minutes to cross a 200ft section. It was terrifying to watch him because he easily could of fallen and slid down the ice but he made it. We all made it. We ended our Mount Rainer expedition with some delicious Mighty-O Donuts. It was a joyous beautiful day.
