# 38 - Mt. Rainier and the Cascade Mountain Range 🌄

In podcast # 35 we talked about the Puget Sound, a body of water that starts north of us in the Straits of Juan de Fuca and extends to Olympia south of us. We live in the area of  Washington State  called The Puget Sound. From our homes in the Puget Sound we see a lot of mountains. Can you see mountains from where you live?

What mountain we can see from many places in Puget Sound? Mount Rainier of course!  It is our mountain. When we ask each other “Is the mountain out today?”, we mean "can you see Mt. Rainier today? …or are clouds covering it up?".  

Rainier is a mountain. Why don’t we say Mountain Rainier? When we talk about the name of one specific mountain we put “Mount”, a short form of “mountain” before the name of the mountain. When we write, we often abbreviate or shorten “mountain” to “M -t”. So when we talk about one mountain we say “Mount” before the name of the mountain.

 How about when we talk about a range or group of mountains? When we talk about a mountain range we put “Mountains” after the name of the mountain range. So, for example, Mount Rainier is one mountain in the Cascade Mountain Range. 

Where is the Cascade Mountain Range? It starts in southern British Columbia continues south through Western Washington and Oregon to Northern California. The Cascade Range is 700 miles long. We often call the mountain range “the Cascades:” How did the Cascade s get that name? Well, “cascade” is another word for “waterfall”. A waterfall’s meaning is just what is sounds like: an area in a river where the water falls or drops many feet - sometimes hundreds of feet. For short you will hear waterfalls called “falls”.

Early explorers of the northwest found cascades or waterfalls on the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon. The water dropped 40 feet in 150 yards.  From these cascades they saw in the distance very high mountains topped with snow. The explorers called the mountains “the Cascades”. The Native Americans called the mountains “Mountains of the Northern People.”

So, the Cascade Mountain range has lots of very high snowcapped mountains. Is there anything else interesting about the mountain range? Well, yes, there are 15 volcanoes in the Cascade Mountain Range. Those volcanoes are called the Cascade volcanoes.  Have any of those volcanoes erupted in the last 100 years? Yes! Mt. St Helens in southern Washington erupted in 1980. 

How about Mt. Rainier? Yup! It’s a volcano too. When did it last erupt? About 500 years ago. Could it erupt again? Yes, as a matter of fact, it’s considered one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes. Yikes! Do you worry about that?

So, Mt. Rainier is a volcano. It’s also Washington’s highest mountain & the highest mountain in the Cascade Range. It’s almost 14,000 feet high (4,389 m). it has 20 glaciers. It is the most glaciated of any other mountain in the lower 48 states* (the 48 states not including Alaska and Hawaii)Amazing hikes to alpine meadows and lakes. Mt. Rainier National Park was established in 1899. It’s very popular! Sunrise is the- highest point in the park you can drive to. You can see views of other volcanoes in the Cascade Range.  Paradise is another popular area on the mountain that has any many hiking trails.  

 British naval captain George Vancouver who explored the Puget Sound in 1792 named the mountain after his friend Rear Admiral Peter Rainier. Native Puyallup Tribe people call the mountain “Tahoma” or “Tacoma” which means the “mother of waters”, and they want to officially change the name from Mt Rainer to Mt. Tahoma. We can call it Mt. Rainier or Mt. Tahoma, but on a clear day we are fortunate that we can enjoy and appreciate the lovely mountain from almost everywhere in the Puget Sound. 

Have you

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