The Geologic Story of Mount Rainier - A look at the geologic past of one of America's most scenic volcanoes

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Title: The Geologic Story of Mount Rainier - A look at the geologic past of one of America's most scenic volcanoes
Author: Crandell, Dwight R.
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.

*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Geologic Story of Mount Rainier - A look at the geologic past of one of America's most scenic volcanoes" ***

[Illustration: Eunice Lake, northwest of Mount Rainier. The lake lies in
a small bedrock basin that was scoured out by a glacier between about
15,000 and 20,000 years ago. The rounded green slopes at the far edge of
the lake are underlain by rock that has been smoothed and grooved by
glacier ice. This side of Mount Rainier rises to Liberty Cap, which
hides the true summit of the volcano.]

The Geologic Story
of Mount Rainier

By
Dwight R. Crandell

_A look at the geologic past of one of America’s most scenic volcanoes_

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY BULLETIN 1292

UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

WALTER J. HICKEL, Secretary

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

William T. Pecora, Director

Library of Congress Catalog-Card No. 79-601704

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1969

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office
Washington, D.C. 20402—Price 65 cents (paper cover)

contents

Page
The changing landscape of 12-60 million years ago 3
Thumbnail biography of Mount Rainier 11
Results of recent eruptions 12
Why glaciers? 23
Work habits of glaciers 25
Yesterday’s glaciers 29
Landslides and mudflows—past, present, and future 35
The volcano’s future? 42
Further reading in geology 43

Frontispiece. Eunice Lake, northwest of Mount Rainier.
Figure Page
1. Outcrop of sandstone and shale in the Puget Group 6
2. Outcrop of welded tuff in the Stevens Ridge Formation 8
3. Granodiorite looks like granite 9
4. Geological cross section of Mount Rainier 10
5. An old lava flow which forms Rampart Ridge 13
6. Columns of andesite at the end of an old lava flow 13
7. Layers of pumice on the floor of a cirque 14
8. Generalized distribution of some pumice layers 16
9. Breadcrust bomb enclosed in a mudflow deposit 19
10. Pumice layer C, which consists of light-brown fragments 20
11. The recent lava cone lies in a depression 21
12. Two ice streams meet to form Cowlitz Glacier 23
13. Glacier-smoothed and grooved rock 26
14. A lake lies behind an end moraine of Flett Glacier 27
15. Recessional moraines on the valley floor of Fryingpan Creek 28
16. Extent of glaciers between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago 30
17. Lateral moraine at Ricksecker Point 31
18. Rock-glacier deposit at The Palisades 33
19. Hummocky end moraine in front of Emmons Glacier 34
20. Avalanche deposits in the White River valley 37
21. The northeast flank of Mount Rainier 39

Table
1. Characteristics, sources, and ages of pumice layers, Mount
Rainier National Park 17
2. Summary of important geologic events in the history of Mount
Rainier National Park 41

The Geologic Story of
Mount Rainier
By Dwight R. Crandell

[Illustration: Map of Cascade Range]

WASHINGTON
Seattle
Tacoma
CASCADE RANGE
Mount Rainier
Mount Adams
Mount St Helens
OREGON
Portland
Mount Hood
_Crater Lake_

Ice-clad Mount Rainier, towering over the landscape of western
Washington, ranks with Fuji-yama in Japan, Popocatepetl in Mexico, and
Vesuvius in Italy among the great volcanoes of the world. At Mount
Rainier, as at other inactive volcanoes, the ever-present possibility of
renewed eruptions gives viewers a sense of anticipation, excitement, and
apprehension not equaled by most other mountains. Even so, many of us
cannot imagine the cataclysmic scale of the eruptions that were
responsible for building the giant cone which now stands in silence. We
accept the volcano as if it had always been there, and we appreciate
only the beauty of its stark expanses of rock and ice, its flower-strewn
alpine meadows, and its bordering evergreen forests.

Mount Rainier owes its scenic beauty to many features. The broad cone
spreads out on top of a major mountain range—the Cascades. The volcano
rises about 7,000 feet above its 7,000-foot foundation, and stands in
solitary splendor—the highest peak in the entire Cascade Range. Its
rocky ice-mantled slopes above timberline contrast with the dense green
forests and give Mount Rainier the appearance of an arctic island in a
temperate sea, an island so large that you can see its full size and
shape only from the air. The mountain is highly photogenic because of
the contrasts it offers among bare rock, snowfields, blue sky, and the
incomparable flower fields that color its lower slopes. Shadows cast by
the multitude of cliffs, ridges, canyons, and pinnacles change
constantly from sunrise to sunset, endlessly varying the texture and
mood of the mountain. The face of the mountain also varies from day to
day as its broad snowfields melt during the summer. The melting of these
frozen reservoirs makes Mount Rainier a natural resource in a practical
as well as in an esthetic sense, for it ensures steady flows of water
for hydroelectric power in the region, regardless of season.

Seen from the Puget Sound country to the west, Mount Rainier has an
unreal quality—its white summit, nearly 3 miles high, seems to float
among the clouds. We share with the populace of the entire lowland a
thrill as we watch skyward the evening’s setting sun redden the
volcano’s western snowfields. When you approach the mountain in its
lovely setting, you may find something that appeals especially to
you—the scenery, the wildlife, the glaciers, or the wildflowers. Or you
may feel challenged to climb to the summit. Mount Rainier and its
neighboring mountains have a special allure for a geologist because he
visualizes the events—some ordinary, some truly spectacular—that made
the present landscape. Such is the fascination of geology. A geologist
becomes trained to see “in his mind’s eye” geologic events of thousands
or even millions of years ago. And, most remarkable, he can “see” these
events by studying rocks in a cliff or roadcut, or perhaps by examining
earthy material that looks like common soil beneath pastureland many
miles away from the volcano.

Our key to understanding the geology of Mount Rainier is that each
geologic event can be reconstructed—or imagined—from the rocks formed at
the time of the event. With this principle as our guide, we will review
the geologic ancestry of this majestic volcano and learn what is behind
its scenery.

The Changing Landscape of 12-60 Million Years Ago

The rocks of the Cascade Range provide a record of earth history that
started nearly 60 million years ago. Even then, as today, waves pounded
on beaches and rivers ran to the sea, molding and distributing material
that formed some of the rocks we now see in the park.

You may find it difficult to imagine the different landscape of that far
distant time. There was no Mount Rainier nor Cascade mountain range. In
fact, there was very little dry land in the area we call western
Washington. Instead, this was a broad lowland of swamps, deltas, and
inlets that bordered the Pacific Ocean. Rivers draining into this
lowland from the east spread sand and clay on the lush swamp growth.
Other plants grew on the deposits, and they were covered, in turn, by
more sand and clay. In this way, thousands of feet of sand and clay and
peat accumulated and were compacted into sandstone, shale, and coal. We
can see some of the rocks formed at that time in cuts along the Mowich
Lake Road west of the park (fig. 1). Seams of coal were mined at
Carbonado and Wilkeson, 10 miles northwest of the park, during the late
19th and the early 20th centuries.

These beds of sandstone, shale, and coal make up a sequence of rocks
called the Puget Group, which is 10,000 feet thick. Wave-ripple marks
and remains of plants show that the rocks were formed in shallow water
fairly close to sea level. How could the rocks have piled up to this
great thickness? The coastal plain and adjacent basin must have been
slowly sinking, and the influx of sand and clay must have just barely
kept pace with the downward movements.

[Illustration: Mount Rainier]

A little less than 40 million years ago, the western Washington
landscape changed dramatically. Geologists R. S. Fiske, C. A. Hopson,
and A. C. Waters have discovered that volcanoes then rose on the former
coastal plain at the site of Mount Rainier National Park and became
islands as the area sank beneath the sea. When molten rock was erupted
underwater from the submerged flanks of these volcanoes, steam
explosions shattered the lava into countless fragments. The resulting
debris, mixed with water, flowed as mud across great areas of the
submerged basin floor.

[Illustration: Outcrop of gray to brown sandstone and dark-gray to black
coaly shale in the Puget Group along the Mowich Lake Road. (Fig. 1)]

You can see rocks formed from these layers of volcanic mud and sand in
cuts along the highway on the east side of Backbone Ridge and between
Cayuse Pass and Tipsoo Lake. Look there for alternating beds of
grayish-green sandstone and breccia, a concretelike rock in which the
pebbles have sharp corners. These rocks are known as the Ohanapecosh
Formation. Like the Puget Group, the Ohanapecosh Formation is at least
10,000 feet thick. Yet, nearly all of it accumulated in shallow water as
western Washington continued to sink slowly during the volcanic
eruptions.

The long-continued sinking finally ended after the Ohanapecosh volcanic
activity ceased. Western Washington was then lifted several thousand
feet above sea level, and the Puget and Ohanapecosh rocks were slowly
compressed into a series of broad shallow folds. Before eruptions began
again, rivers cut valleys hundreds of feet deep, and weathering of the
rocks produced thick red clayey soils similar to those that are forming
in some areas of high rainfall and high temperature today. Look for the
red rocks formed from these old soils in roadcuts as you drive along the
Stevens Canyon road about 2 miles southeast of Box Canyon.

The next volcanic eruptions, which may have begun between 25 and 30
million years ago, differed from those of Ohanapecosh time. These
volcanoes, somewhere beyond the boundaries of the park, erupted great
flows of hot pumice that, being highly mobile, rushed down the flanks of
the volcanoes and spread over many square miles of the adjacent regions.
The pumice flows were “lubricated” by hot volcanic gas emitted from
inside each pumice particle, which buffered it from other particles.
Some hot pumice flows were 350 feet deep. The heat still remaining in
the pumice after it stopped flowing partly melted the particles to form
a hard rock known as welded tuff. Repeated pumice flows buried the hilly
landscape and eventually formed a vast volcanic plain. The rocks, which
are mostly welded tuffs, are now the Stevens Ridge Formation, which you
can see along the highway in Stevens Canyon 1-2 miles west of Box
Canyon. You can recognize the welded tuff by its light-gray to white
color and its many flattened and sharp-edged inclusions of darker gray
pumice (fig. 2).

Another period of volcanism followed, of still a different kind, when
lava flowed outward from broad low volcanoes. The flows were of two
kinds: basalt, the kind now erupted by Hawaiian volcanoes, and andesite,
the type erupted by Mount Rainier. Individual flows 50-500 feet thick
were stacked on top of one another to a total depth of fully 2,500 feet.
We know these rocks as the Fifes Peak Formation. They form many of the
cliffs and peaks in the northwestern part of the park. You can examine
them in cuts along the Mowich Lake Road between Mountain Meadows and
Mowich Lake. The time of the eruption of the Fifes Peak lavas may have
been between 20 and 30 million years ago.

When the Fifes Peak volcanoes finally became extinct, this part of
western Washington changed again. The rocks once more were uplifted and
compressed into broad folds parallel to those formed at the end of
Ohanapecosh time. The rocks buckled and, in places, broke and shifted
thousands of feet along great fractures, or faults.

[Illustration: Outcrop of light-gray welded tuff in the Stevens Ridge
Formation along the road in Stevens Canyon. The angular dark-gray
fragments in the welded tuff are chunks of pumice. (Fig. 2)]

About 12 million years ago one or more masses of molten rock, many miles
across, pushed upward through the Puget Group and younger rocks. When
this molten rock cooled and hardened, it formed granodiorite, a close
relative of granite. Although most of the molten rock solidified
underground, some of it reached the land surface and formed volcanoes at
a few places within the area of Mount Rainier National Park.

[Illustration: Granodiorite looks like granite and has a light-gray
speckled appearance. The knife is about 3 inches long. (Fig. 3)]

Granodiorite is probably the most attractive rock in the park. It is
mostly white, but it contains large dark mineral grains that give it a
“salt-and-pepper” appearance (fig. 3). The large size of the grains is a
result of the molten rock cooling slowly at a considerable depth below
the land surface—the individual minerals had a long time to grow before
the “melt” solidified into rock. In contrast, the rocks formed from
lavas that flowed onto the ground surface are generally fine grained
because the lavas cooled too quickly for the mineral grains to grow
appreciably.

Granodiorite underlies the White River valley, the Carbon River valley,
and parts of the upper Nisqually River valley and the Tatoosh Range. You
can see it in roadcuts between Longmire and Christine Falls and at
several places along the road between White River Ranger Station and
White River campground.

[Illustration: Geological cross section of Mount Rainier and its
foundation rocks from Mother Mountain southward to Tatoosh Range.
True-scale cross section is nearly 17 miles long. Slightly modified from
U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 444, Plate 1. (Fig. 4)]

After the granodiorite solidified, the foundation of Mount Rainier was
complete except for one other landscape change that preceded the birth
of the volcano. Not long after the granodiorite was formed, the Cascade
mountain range began to rise—not rapidly, but little by little over many
thousands of years. As the land rose, rivers cut valleys into the
growing mountains so that by the time the new volcano began to erupt,
the Cascades had already been carved into a rugged range of high ridges
and peaks separated by deep valleys. Deep erosion thus laid bare the
rock layers in which we today read the geologic history of the park
(fig. 4).

Thumbnail Biography of Mount Rainier

The life span of a volcano can be compared to that of an
individual—after his birth and a brief youth, he matures and grows old.
The birth date of Mount Rainier is not known for sure, but it must have
been at least several hundred thousand years ago. We cannot tell much
about the volcano’s complex youth because most of its earliest deposits
are now buried under later ones. At an early age, well before the cone
grew to its present size, thick lava, like hot tar, flowed repeatedly
5-15 miles down the deep canyons of the surrounding mountains. Because
these lava flows resisted later erosion by rivers and glaciers, most of
them now form ridgetops, as at Rampart Ridge, Burroughs Mountain, Grand
Park, and Klapatche Ridge (figs. 5 and 6). Violent explosions
occasionally threw pumice onto the slopes of the growing volcano and the
surrounding mountains. As the volcano matured, the long thick flows were
succeeded by thinner and shorter ones which, piled on top of one
another, built the giant cone that now dominates the region. Even though
Mount Rainier has grown old now, it has revived briefly at many times
during the last 10,000 years or so and may erupt again in the future.

The events of the last 10,000 years, because they are so recent, in
terms of geologic time, are better known than those of any earlier time,
and we can examine this part of the volcano’s history in some detail. We
will study three principal subjects: eruptions—because they have had
widespread effects; glaciers—because they are such conspicuous features
on the mountain; and landslides—because they have drastically changed
the volcano’s shape.

Results of Recent Eruptions

While hiking, you soon become aware that there is a large amount of
pumice along the trails in Mount Rainier National Park. Pumice is a
lightweight volcanic rock so full of air spaces that it will float on
water. The air spaces, or bubbles, originated when fragments of gas-rich
lava were explosively thrown into the air above the volcano, and the
molten rock hardened before the gas could escape. If you examine pumice
deposits in a trail cut, in a streambank, or in the roots of blown-over
trees, you may also note that there is more than one layer (fig. 7). If
you circle the volcano on the Wonderland Trail, you may notice that the
greatest number of pumice layers are on the east side of the park, but
the thickest single layer is on the west side. The explanation lies
partly in the source of the pumice deposits, because some pumice was
erupted not by Mount Rainier but by other volcanoes in the Cascade Range
of Washington and Oregon and brought to the park by strong southerly or
southwesterly winds. The layers of pumice thrown out by Mount Rainier
within the last 10,000 years lie mostly on the east side of the volcano.
Strong winds evidently swept eruption clouds to the east during the
outbursts and prevented the pumice from falling west of the volcano.
This pattern of distribution, coupled with the coarsening and thickening
of the pumice toward the volcano, reveals that the layers were erupted
by Mount Rainier.

[Illustration: An old lava flow from Mount Rainier which forms Rampart
Ridge west of the meadow at Longmire. The thick lava flowed down an old
valley floor and cooled and solidified. Rivers then eroded new valleys
along both sides of the flow. These new valleys, subsequently glaciated,
are today followed by the Nisqually River and Kautz Creek. Thus, the
area of a former valley floor is now a ridge. (Fig. 5)]

[Illustration: Columns of dark-gray andesite at the east end of an old
lava flow from Mount Rainier. This outcrop is near the point at which
the highway to Yakima Park crosses Yakima Creek. (Fig. 6)]

[Illustration: Layers of pumice on the floor of a cirque near Paradise
Park. The yellow bed at the bottom is layer O, which was erupted by
Mount Mazama volcano at the site of Crater Lake, Oregon, about 6,600
years ago. The yellowish-brown layer a few inches above layer O is layer
D, a pumice that was erupted by Mount Rainier between 5,800 and 6,600
years ago. The light-yellowish-brown pumice bed at the top of the
outcrop is layer Y, which originated at Mount St. Helens volcano between
3,250 and 4,000 years ago. Photograph by D. R. Mullineaux, U.S.
Geological Survey. (Fig. 7)]

D. R. Mullineaux of the U.S. Geological Survey has studied in detail the
pumice deposits of Mount Rainier National Park. One of his first and
most important discoveries was that even though some pumice layers are
spread widely over the park, they were erupted from other volcanoes.
Strangely enough, one layer is thicker and more widespread than any
recent pumice erupted by Mount Rainier. We can clearly see that these
foreign pumice layers did not come from Mount Rainier, for they thicken
and coarsen southward, away from the park. The oldest was erupted by
Mount Mazama volcano at the site of Crater Lake, Oregon, about 6,600
years ago; this pumice forms a yellowish-orange layer about 2 inches
thick nearly everywhere in the park. The pumice has a texture like that
of sandy flour, and it feels grainy when rubbed between the fingers. It
is so fine grained because of the great distance to its source, 250
miles due south of Mount Rainier. Near Crater Lake this same pumice
consists of large chunks and is many feet thick.

Two other foreign pumice deposits in the park were erupted by Mount St.
Helens, a symmetrical young volcanic cone about 50 miles southwest of
Mount Rainier. The older of the two is between 3,250 and 4,000 years
old; it forms a blanket of yellow sand-sized pumice that is as much as
20 inches thick in the western part of the park. The younger pumice
layer is most conspicuous at the ground surface in the eastern part of
the park, where it is as much as 4 inches thick and resembles a fine
white sand. It is about 450 years old.

[Illustration: Mount St. Helens as it appears from Mount Rainier.]

An inconspicuous bed of pumice records the first eruption of Mount
Rainier that occurred after Ice Age glaciers melted back to the slopes
of the volcano. It can be found on the east side of the mountain from
Grand Park south to Ohanapecosh campground (fig. 8). In roadcuts near
the east end of Yakima Park (Sunrise) the pumice forms a rusty-brown bed
about 4 inches thick which contains fragments as much as 2 inches
across. Wood from a thin layer of peat just above the pumice was dated
by its content of radioactive carbon as about 8,750 years old; thus, the
pumice is even older. We call this pumice layer R for convenience; other
letter symbols have been assigned to the younger layers (table 1).

[Illustration: Generalized distribution of some pumice layers within
Mount Rainier National Park. The pumice of layers W and Y was erupted by
Mount St. Helens; all the other pumice originated at Mount Rainier.
Letters represent the following localities: C, Cougar Rock campground;
I, Ipsut Creek campground; L, Longmire; M, Mowich Lake; O, Ohanapecosh
campground; P, Paradise Park; S, summit crater; T, Tipsoo Lake; W, White
River campground; and Y, Yakima Park. Based on studies by D. R.
Mullineaux. (Fig. 8)]

[Illustration: Layer X (Between 110 and 150 years old)]

[Illustration: Layer C (Between 2,150 and 2,500 years old)]

[Illustration: Layer D (Between 5,800 and 6,600 years old)]

[Illustration: Layer L (Between 5,800 and 6,600 years old)]

[Illustration: Layer R (More than 8,750 years old)]

[Illustration: Layer W (line pattern), and Layer Y (stipple pattern)
(About 450 years old and 3,250 to 4,000 years old, respectively)]

TABLE 1.—_Characteristics, sources, and ages of pumice layers,
Mount Rainier National Park_
[Based on studies by D. R. Mullineaux]

Common range of
thickness in park
Pumice West East Common Color Source Approximate
layer side side range in age in 1968,
(inches) (inches) diameter or limiting
of pumice dates (years
fragments ago)
(inches)

X Absent [1] ¼-2 Light olive Mount 100-150
gray Rainier.
W 0-1 1-3 Medium White Mount St. [2]450
sand Helens.
C Absent 1-8 ¼-8 Brown Mount 2,150-2,500
Rainier.
Y 5-20 1-5 Coarse Yellow Mount St. 3,250-4,000
sand Helens.
D Absent 0-6 ¼-6 Brown Mount 5,800-6,600
Rainier.
L Absent 0-8 ¼-2 Brown Mount 5,800-6,600
Rainier.
O 1-3 1-3 Flourlike Yellowish Mount About 6,600
to fine orange Mazama.
sand
R Absent 0-5 ⅛-1 Reddish Mount 8,750-11,000?
brown Rainier.

The next two eruptions of Mount Rainier occurred between 5,800 and 6,600
years ago. Again, pumice spread over the area east of the volcano. The
older pumice, which we call layer L, covers a band only a few miles wide
that extends to the southeast from the volcano (fig. 8). The younger
pumice, layer D, covers an area at least 10 miles wide directly east of
the volcano. The distribution of both deposits shows that there were
strong directional winds during the eruptions. The long, narrow pattern
of layer L probably was caused by strong northwesterly winds during a
short-lived eruption. The pattern of layer D was caused by winds from
the west.

Some time during these eruptions, hot volcanic bombs and rock fragments
were thrown out of Mount Rainier’s crater and fell onto surrounding
areas of snow and ice. Wholesale melting resulted, and floods descended
the east flank of the volcano carrying millions of tons of ash, newly
erupted rock debris, and breadcrust bombs. Breadcrust bombs seem to be
solid rock, but if you would break one open, you would find that the
inside is hollow or is filled with a spongy mass of black glass. Their
outer surfaces are cracked like the crust of a loaf of hard-crusted
bread (fig. 9), so we call them breadcrust bombs. They originated as
blobs of soft, red-hot lava which were thrown out of the volcano’s
crater. As the masses arched through the air, they quickly chilled on
the outside, and a hardened skin formed around the still hot and plastic
core. As their outsides cooled, gas pressure in their hot interiors
caused the bombs to expand slightly and their solidified outer skin to
crack. When they struck the ground, many of the bombs became flattened
on one side, but they were still plastic and sticky enough to remain
whole.

Bombs can be found in two deposits that form the south bank of the White
River about half a mile downstream from the White River campground. The
deposits are mudflows caused by the mixing of hot rock debris with the
water from melted snow and ice. As the mudflows moved down the valley
floor they must have resembled flowing masses of wet concrete.

Mount Rainier erupted several times between about 2,500 and 2,000 years
ago. During one of the first eruptions, a mass of hot ash, rock
fragments, and breadcrust bombs avalanched down the side of the volcano
and buried the floor of the South Puyallup River valley. Although this
hot mass flowed like a wet mudflow, the temperature of the rock debris
was above 600°F. Thus, if any water had been present, it would have been
in the form of steam. You can see the resulting deposit in cuts along
the West Side Road on both sides of the bridge across the South Puyallup
River. Innumerable bombs have rolled from the cuts into the ditches
beside the road. A charcoal log found in the deposit had a radiocarbon
age of about 2,500 years.

[Illustration: A large breadcrust bomb enclosed in a mudflow deposit
that consists of a mixture of volcanic ash and rock fragments. The
outcrop is on the south bank of the White River about half a mile
downstream from the White River campground. (Fig. 9)]

Large amounts of pumice were thrown out of the volcano at the same time
as the bombs or soon after. The pumice covers most of the eastern half
of the park, and fragments are scattered as far southwest as Pyramid
Peak and as far northwest as Spray Park. This pumice, called layer C, is
especially thick and coarse at Yakima Park and Burroughs Mountain, where
it lies at the ground surface (fig. 10). Here the light-brown layer is
5-6 inches thick and consists of irregularly shaped pumice fragments as
much as several inches across. Mingled with the pumice fragments are
fist-sized chunks of light-gray rock that probably were simultaneously
thrown out of the volcano by violent explosions. Some of these angular
rocks were hurled as far as Shriner Peak, 11 miles east of Mount
Rainier’s summit.

[Illustration: Pumice layer C, which consists of light-brown fragments,
lies at the ground surface over much of the eastern part of the park.
(Fig. 10)]

The eruptive period was climaxed by the building of the volcano’s
present summit cone, which is at least 1,000 feet high and 1 mile across
at its base. Although dwarfed by the tremendous bulk of Mount Rainier,
it is a little larger than the cone of the well-known Mexican volcano
Parícutin that appeared in 1943 and erupted until 1952. Mount Rainier’s
present summit cone was built within a broad depression at the top of
the main volcano that had been formed nearly 4,000 years earlier (fig.
11; see p. 40). The cone consists of a series of thin black lava flows,
and its top is indented by two overlapping craters. Rocks around the
craters are still warm in places, and steam vents melt caves in the
summit icecap. The first climbers who reached the top of the mountain,
in 1870, spent the night in one of these caves, as have many benighted
climbers since.

[Illustration: The snow-covered lava cone lies in a depression 1¼ miles
wide at the summit of the volcano. The cone was probably built about
2,000 years ago. Liberty Cap is to the left and Point Success is to the
right. The cliffs below and to the right of Liberty Cap enclose Sunset
Amphitheater. (Fig. 11)]

Even though the lava flows that formed the summit cone were relatively
short, their eruption greatly affected some valleys at the base of the
volcano. The hot lava melted snow and ice at the volcano’s summit,
causing floods that rushed down the east and south sides. When the
floods reached the valley floors, they picked up great quantities of
loose rock debris and carried it downstream, sometimes forming mudflows.
The resulting flood and mudflow deposits raised the floors of the White
and Nisqually River valleys as much as 80 feet higher than they are
today. These valley floors, as well as several others, then became broad
wastes of bare sand and gravel that extended beyond the park boundaries.
Later, the rivers cut down to their present levels, but they left
remnants of the flood and mudflow deposits as terraces or benches along
the sides of the valleys. You can camp on such a terrace in the
Nisqually River valley at the Cougar Rock campground. The White River
campground occupies a similar terrace in the White River valley.

When did Mount Rainier erupt last? The most recent pumice eruption was
just a little over a century ago. However, between 1820 and 1894,
observers reported at least 14 eruptions. Some of these may have been
just large dust clouds, caused by rockfalls, that were mistaken for
clouds of newly erupted ash. Other clouds may have been from genuine
eruptions that left no recognizable deposits. D. R. Mullineaux has found
that at least one eruption of that era did spread pumice over an area
east of the volcano between Burroughs Mountain and Indian Bar to a
distance of at least 6 miles from the crater. Pieces of the pumice,
layer X, are light brownish gray and as large as 2 inches across. We
find only scattered fragments of the pumice, and nowhere are they in a
continuous layer. Where the X pumice is directly on top of layer C, we
cannot tell them apart. The best areas for us to study the younger
pumice, therefore, are glacial moraines formed within the last 150
years, because no pumice other than layer X is present on the moraines.
Fortunately, R. S. Sigafoos and E. L. Hendricks of the U.S. Geological
Survey have determined the ages of the moraines by counting the growth
rings of trees on them. Their studies show that the pumice was erupted
between about 1820 and 1854.

Captain John Frémont, an early explorer of the Oregon Territory,
recorded that Mount Rainier was erupting in November 1843, but his
journals give no details. Others have reported eruptions in 1820, 1846,
1854, and 1858. Pumice layer X probably was erupted during one or more
of these times, but we do not know exactly when.

And will Mount Rainier erupt again? We think that it will, but we now
have no sure way of predicting the time, the kind, or the scale of
future eruptions.

Why Glaciers?

We frequently hear the question: “Why are there glaciers on Mount
Rainier?” A glacier forms wherever snowfall repeatedly exceeds melting
over a period of years. Above 6,500-7,000 feet on Mount Rainier, more
than 50 feet of snow falls each winter, and not all of it melts before
the next winter. The survival of this snow from one year to the next
depends partly on the cooler temperatures at the higher altitudes, and
perhaps also on the somewhat deeper snowfalls there.

[Illustration: Two ice streams meet to form the half-mile-wide Cowlitz
Glacier. One heads on the flank of the volcano and the other (Ingraham
Glacier) at the summit. The firnline is a short distance above the
junction of the glaciers. The high bare embankment at the extreme right
is a lateral moraine that was formed about 100 years ago when the
glacier was thicker and about 1½ miles longer. (Fig. 12)]

LITTLE TAHOMA PEAK
MOUNT RAINIER
INGRAHAM GLACIER
COWLITZ GLACIER

A line that marks the limit on a mountain above which snow persists from
one winter to the next is called the annual snowline, and this line on a
glacier is called the firnline (fig. 12). Above the firnline, snow that
falls each year packs down and changes into glacier ice as air is slowly
forced out of it. This part of the glacier is its accumulation area,
where more snow falls each year than is lost by melting. Below the
firnline is the ablation area, where melting predominates. The firnline
on Mount Rainier’s glaciers has been well above 6,500 feet in recent
years. But some glaciers extend to altitudes below 5,000 feet—that is,
far down into the ablation area. They do this by slowly flowing
downhill. Solid ice flows by sliding on the hard bedrock under the
glacier and by slipping along the innumerable surfaces within the ice
crystals that make up the glacier.

The rate of flow and the rate of ablation govern the distance a glacier
extends down into the ablation zone. If these rates remain fairly
constant, the glacier will be in balance and its size will be about the
same from year to year. But if changing weather patterns affect the
rates of ablation or accumulation, or both, the glacier will either
become smaller or grow larger. The change you are most likely to notice
is in the position of the glacier’s terminus, which may either recede or
advance, but precise measurements of the upper reaches of a glacier also
show volume changes there, some of which may not affect the glacier’s
terminus for many years, if ever.

Crevasses are a glacier’s most awesome features and are a constant
hazard for climbers. They form where adjacent parts of a glacier are
moving at different speeds. Some of Mount Rainier’s glaciers may be
flowing at a speed of several thousand feet per year along their centers
but at a much slower rate along their margins. This unequal rate of flow
produces stresses in the ice that cause it to break. Groups of crevasses
often form where the glacier flows over a steep place in its bed. The
ice moves faster here, and pulls apart, and a crevasse is formed.
Although a large crevasse may seem to be bottomless to the observer,
most crevasses are less than 100 feet deep because ice pressure tends to
close the open spaces in the ice below that depth.[3]

Ice covers 37 square miles of the park today. Individual glaciers that
make up this ice blanket are placed into three groups, depending on
their place of origin. Those of one group originate at the volcano’s
summit and flow far down the valleys that radiate from the cone. Most of
the snow that nourishes these glaciers probably falls on them at
altitudes well below the summit. The largest examples of the group are
the Emmons, Nisqually, and Tahoma Glaciers.

Glaciers of the second group originate on the flanks of the volcano,
mostly at altitudes between 7,000 and 10,000 feet. This group is
represented by the South Tahoma, Carbon, and Inter Glaciers. Glaciers of
the third group are on north-facing slopes in the mountains around Mount
Rainier. They are mostly at altitudes of about 6,000 feet, and they owe
their existence to locations well protected from solar heat. Glaciers
representing this group are the Unicorn and Pinnacle Glaciers in the
Tatoosh Range, a small unnamed glacier near the west end of Burroughs
Mountain, and the somewhat larger Sarvent Glaciers east of Mount
Rainier.

Work Habits of Glaciers

Glaciers are extremely capable workers. Their work includes erosion,
transportation, and deposition. The smoothed and grooved bedrock at Box
Canyon and at many points along the trail to the ice caves near Paradise
Park shows erosion of rock by glacier ice. Rock fragments carried by
glaciers cut grooves in the hard bedrock and polish its surface
(fig. 13). Although any one rock fragment might scrape away only 1
millimeter of rock along a single groove, the total effect is great when
multiplied by countless thousands of similar fragments rasping a bedrock
surface for hundreds or thousands of years. Glacier ice may also break
chunks of rock loose as it overrides them and may even plow up sections
of softer rocks.

Glaciers transport not only the rocks that they quarry and scrape from
their beds but also, more conspicuously, those that fall onto their
surfaces from nearby cliffs. These falling rocks range in size from tiny
particles to individual masses that weigh tens of thousands of tons,
like those that fell onto Emmons Glacier from Little Tahoma Peak in
1963. (See p. 35.)

A glacier deposits most rock debris at its terminus. The steep snout of
any major glacier is a dangerous place to approach closely because rock
debris almost constantly falls, rolls, and slides down the melting ice
faces. Much of this debris collects at the ice margin, and if the margin
stays in one place long enough a ridge-shaped end moraine of rock debris
forms along the ice front (fig. 14). If such a moraine forms across the
front of a glacier at its farthest advance it is called a terminal
moraine. End moraines that form as the ice recedes are called
recessional moraines (fig. 15). Ridges of rock debris that form along
the sides of a glacier are called lateral moraines (fig. 12).

Some recent moraines of modern glaciers are only a few feet away from
the present ice margin; others, formed thousands of years ago during the
most recent major glaciation, are on ridgetops and valley sides or
floors miles away from modern glaciers. By examining the shape and
location of these moraines, we can reconstruct the size and character of
past glaciers, as we will see in the next section.

[Illustration: Glacier-smoothed and grooved rock along the Wonderland
Trail between Indian Bar and Panhandle Gap. (Fig. 13)]

[Illustration: A muddy grayish-blue lake several hundred feet long lies
behind a small horseshoe-shaped end moraine of Flett Glacier, on the
northwest side of Mount Rainier. The glacier is mostly out of view to
the left. (Fig. 14)]

Glaciers erode, transport, and deposit huge quantities of rock debris.
So do their coworkers, the melt-water streams. These turbulent streams
flow from tunnels beneath every glacier, and their degree of muddiness
roughly shows how active the glacier is. Glaciers that move very slowly,
or that are stagnant, produce relatively clear melt water because they
are not actively eroding bedrock. In contrast, streams of muddy water
that look like chocolate milk often come from very active or “live”
glaciers. These streams carry rock debris ranging from flour-size
particles to large boulders. You can sense the carrying power of this
swiftly moving water on warm summer days, when large cobbles and
boulders are bumping along in a stream swollen by rapid glacier melting.
Although you can rarely see these boulders, you can hear their constant
low thunder. Their repeated impacts on other boulders in the streambed
will vibrate the nearby streambanks beneath your feet. Hikers often find
that a melt-water stream safe to cross in the early morning of a warm
summer day is an impassable torrent at the same spot by early afternoon.

[Illustration: Four curved recessional moraines are spread over a
distance of 2,000 feet on the valley floor of Fryingpan Creek. They were
formed within the last few hundred years as Fryingpan Glacier lost
volume and shrank back toward its present position above a line of
cliffs. (Fig. 15)]

A melt-water stream generally deposits coarse material wherever the
slope of the valley floor decreases and the stream loses some of its
velocity and carrying power. Only a flood may move the boulders farther
downstream. However, the current carries fine material far downstream to
deposit it in lakes, in Puget Sound, or in the Pacific Ocean. The
Puyallup River, for example, is still very muddy where it enters Puget
Sound at Tacoma, more than 40 miles from its source in the glaciers on
Mount Rainier.

During the last glaciation, when glaciers were much larger than they are
now, melt-water streams carrying great quantities of sand and gravel
built valley floors up to levels tens of feet higher than they are
today. Later, as the glaciers grew smaller, the rivers cut down into
their valley floors and remnants of the sand and gravel deposits were
left standing in benches or terraces along the sides of the valleys. You
can see a good example of such a terrace in the Nisqually River valley
beyond Ashford, which is 5 miles west of the park. You cross it on the
highway that leads to the park. Cuts beneath the terrace reveal deposits
of sand, cobbles, and boulders that look the same as those deposits
being formed today by melt-water streams. The terrace west of Ashford
was formed a little more than 15,000 years ago, when a glacier extended
down the Nisqually River valley to the vicinity of Ashford.

Yesterday’s Glaciers

Mount Rainier’s great sprawling cone would seem incomplete without the
glistening sheets of ice that descend its flanks. We have reason to
believe that the volcano has borne glaciers ever since its
origin—sometimes smaller than now, at other times vastly larger. Mount
Rainier probably started to grow during the middle part of the
Pleistocene Epoch, or Ice Age, which began more than 1 million years
ago, but glaciers had covered this part of the mountains even before the
volcano appeared. Masses of rock debris formed by ancient glaciers occur
beneath lava flows from Mount Rainier on the west side of Mazama Ridge
just upslope from Narada Falls, on the north side of Glacier Basin, and
at a few other places in the park.

Mount Rainier may have reached its present size by about 75,000 years
ago. Since that time great icefields and glaciers have formed at least
three times on the slopes of the volcano and in the nearby mountains.
During the first two glaciations, ice completely buried the flanks of
the volcano and the surrounding mountains, except for the very highest
ridges and peaks. These great ice masses slowly flowed down all the
valleys that head at Mount Rainier. The glacier in the Cowlitz River
valley, for example, extended 65 miles from the volcano and reached a
point about 33 miles west of the community of Randle. Deposits of the
younger of these two glacial episodes can be seen in cuts along the
Mowich Lake Road for a distance of about 1½ miles inside the park
boundary. The glacial deposits were originally more widespread, but in
most of the park they have been removed by erosion or covered by the
deposits of yet younger glaciers.

[Illustration: Extent of glaciers in the Cascade Range near Mount
Rainier between about 15,000 and 25,000 years ago. Arrows show the
direction of ice movement; solid black represents modern glaciers on
Mount Rainier. (Fig. 16)]

During the most recent major glaciation of the park, which lasted from
roughly 25,000 to 10,000 years ago, ice again sheathed the slopes of the
volcano, but glaciers in the nearby mountains were smaller than before.
Most of the glaciers originated at the valley heads, where they gouged
out countless bowl-shaped bedrock basins called cirques. Many of the
basins held lakes after the glaciers disappeared. (See frontispiece.)
Hikers on the trail to the Paradise ice caves cross the floor of a
typical cirque at the head of Paradise Valley. From the Sunrise Visitor
Center at Yakima Park you can walk a short distance to a point along the
crest of the Sourdough Mountains and stand at the rim of a deep
north-facing cirque. Ice originating in this cirque and in the cirques
adjacent to it moved northward down the valley of Huckleberry Creek at
least as far as the park’s north boundary (fig. 16).

These glaciers left most valley walls in the park covered with rock
debris. Lateral moraines can be seen along the highway at and just east
of Ricksecker Point (fig. 17). Other glacial deposits are especially
well displayed in roadcuts along the north wall of the White River
valley.

[Illustration: Lateral moraine of rock debris at Ricksecker Point. It
was formed by Nisqually Glacier when the glacier was at least 1,000 feet
thick and about 15 miles longer than it is today. (Fig. 17)]

A little more than 15,000 years ago the long glaciers began to shrink
and recede. By 11,000 years ago there was only about as much ice on
Mount Rainier as there has been within the last century. Then, during a
short period of renewed glacier growth, most glaciers expanded short
distances and new ones appeared in cirques from which ice had
disappeared only a short time before. In some of these cirques so much
rock debris was being dislodged from surrounding cliffs by repeated
freeze and thaw that a rock glacier, consisting mostly of rock fragments
bound together by ice, was formed. A trail to the Huckleberry Creek
valley crosses hummocky rock debris left by such a rock glacier in a
cirque on the southeast side of Mount Fremont. A larger rock-glacier
deposit lies about 2 miles north of Sunrise Point in an east-facing
cirque between The Palisades and Hidden Lake (fig. 18).

In other cirques, where the proportion of ice to rock debris was
greater, the glacier transported the debris a short distance forward and
built a terminal moraine. You can see particularly good examples of
moraines formed about 11,000 years ago near Tipsoo Lake, where the pond
southeast of the lake is dammed by a moraine, and at Mystic Lake. The
ice that formed the terminal moraine at Mystic Lake was a tongue of
Carbon Glacier.

In some places the orientation or altitude of the cirque did not permit
enough snow to accumulate to form a glacier but just enough to create a
permanent snowbank. Rock debris that fell from the surrounding cliffs
rolled down these snowbanks and formed low ridges at their toes. Such a
ridge is called a protalus rampart because it is found just in front of
the apron of rock fragments, called talus, that lies beneath cliffs. A
trail at Sunrise Point leads to protalus ramparts along the north side
of Sunrise Ridge.

During the last 10,000 years, glaciers have been very small by
comparison with the great ice mantles that overwhelmed the park earlier.
However, glaciers have grown larger at least twice just within the last
3,000 years. During both of these periods most glaciers were slightly
larger than they are today, and ice occupied most cirques at altitudes
above 6,500 feet—even some that are now free of ice. The most recent
time of extensive glacier growth began at least 800 years ago, and
various glaciers in the park reached their maximum size between the
mid-14th century and the mid-19th century. Oddly enough, even though all
the glaciers headed on Mount Rainier, they did not all attain their
maximum size simultaneously. The largest terminal moraine of this most
recent glacial period was built by Emmons Glacier in the White River
valley (fig. 19). It is now largely forested, and cores taken from the
trees with a special boring tool that does not harm the tree show ages
indicating that the moraine was stable enough to permit seedlings to
survive on it by the mid-17th century. A similar but smaller terminal
moraine built by Cowlitz Glacier has trees on it that started to grow in
the mid-14th century.

[Illustration: Rock-glacier deposit (light-gray rubble beyond the brown
slopes in the foreground) at The Palisades, which was formed about
11,000 years ago when the climate was colder than it is today. Rocks
fell from the cliffs in such great quantity that a small glacier in
front of the cliffs consisted of more rock debris than ice. The melting
of the ice left a mass of broken rock several hundred feet thick which
covers about 80 acres. (Fig. 18)]

[Illustration: The hummocky end moraine at the left still had blocks of
ice buried in it when this picture was taken in 1954. The front of
Emmons Glacier was near the left edge of the bare moraine in about 1900.
Now the glacier ends 1 mile farther upvalley at the upper right. The
valley floor and moraine were buried by an avalanche of rock debris from
Little Tahoma Peak in 1963. (Fig. 19)]

Nearly all the glaciers gradually decreased in size after the mid-18th
century. Although the shrinkage was sometimes interrupted by short
periods of renewed glacier growth, by 1950 the glaciers at Mount Rainier
covered only about two-thirds of the area that had been buried by ice
only a century before. The overall loss of volume by Rainier’s glaciers,
as well as those elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, was slowed or
halted by slightly cooler temperatures and higher precipitation starting
in the mid-1940’s. Volume increases in their upper reaches caused the
larger glaciers to grow from year to year, and since the early 1950’s
the terminuses of many glaciers have been advancing. This renewed growth
of glaciers is not unique at Mount Rainier—similar changes have been
observed at other glaciers in the Cascade Range and elsewhere.

Landslides and Mudflows—Past, Present, and Future

Some of the most effective means of erosion at Mount Rainier are
landslides and mudflows. Erosion of this kind is sometimes spectacular.
Within an interval of only minutes or a few hours huge masses of rock
may fall, slide, or flow off the volcano and move far downvalley.

Large landslides have occurred at many other places in the park—one in
the area northeast of Mount Rainier is so conspicuous that its source
has been named Slide Mountain. The ragged scar left by another slide
near Grand Park is aptly called Scarface. You cross a slide on the
Mather Memorial Parkway (U.S. Highway 410) just north of Cayuse Pass.
Broken and jumbled rock debris of many sizes borders both sides of the
highway there. This landslide broke loose in rocks of the Ohanapecosh
Formation, slid downslope to the bottom of the valley, and dammed
Klickitat Creek to form Ghost Lake. Rocks have also slid downslope on
the west side of Backbone Ridge and on the east side of the Ohanapecosh
River valley a short distance north of Ohanapecosh campground. The slide
on Backbone Ridge is still slowly moving today. Another slide moves a
few inches each year on the west side of the Nisqually River valley
about 1 mile northwest of the visitor center at Paradise Park. You can
recognize the slide by a jagged horizontal crack 1,000 feet long at its
top.

A far more spectacular variety of landslide occurs when a mass of rock
drops from a cliff to form a rockfall. The largest rockfalls on Mount
Rainier in historic time occurred in December 1963 on the east flank.
Masses of rock hundreds of feet across fell repeatedly from the steep
north face of Little Tahoma Peak onto Emmons Glacier. The rock masses
shattered into dust and countless fragments, fanned out across the
glacier, then avalanched down the steep ice surface at tremendous speed.
When the avalanches reached the end of the glacier they shot out into
space as sheets of rock debris. As these hurtling sheets settled toward
the valley floor, a cushion of compressed air formed beneath them,
comparable to the air cushion that momentarily buoys up a sheet of
plywood that is dropped onto a flat surface. Air that was trapped
beneath these speeding avalanches reduced friction and permitted one of
the avalanches to move almost 2 miles beyond the end of the glacier.
This avalanche passed completely over a small wooden gage house about 5
feet high on the valley floor without damaging it, then ran headlong
into the north base of Goat Island Mountain where it scraped away trees
and bushes. A later avalanche stopped just short of the gage house, and
wind that was expelled from beneath the rock debris blasted the
still-undamaged house several hundred feet forward. It now rests in the
scar left by the earlier avalanche on the side of Goat Island Mountain.

At least seven rockfalls and avalanches descended from Little Tahoma
Peak, separated perhaps by only minutes or hours. The reddish-gray
masses of broken and pulverized rock—some spread helter-skelter, some
piled in long sharp-crested ridges—now lie on the valley floor between
the White River campground and Emmons Glacier (fig. 20).

The rockfalls might have been caused by a steam explosion near the base
of Little Tahoma Peak. Steam jets and small explosions are not unusual
phenomena at Mount Rainier, although they never have had such dramatic
effects in historic time.

Incredibly larger avalanches of rock fell repeatedly from the sides of
Mount Rainier during prehistoric time. One such avalanche originated
near the summit of the volcano and blanketed Paradise Park and Paradise
Valley with a yellowish-orange mixture of clay and rocks sometime
between 5,800 and 6,600 years ago. You can see this avalanche deposit in
shallow cuts along trails and roads in the Paradise area. Huge blocks of
rock that came down with the avalanche are scattered in the meadows of
Paradise Park between the visitor center and Panorama Point. Although
the deposit is now less than 15 feet thick in most places, the mass that
flowed down Paradise Valley must have been 600 feet thick, because we
can find remnants of it on top of Mazama Ridge. A tongue of the wet mass
flowed through a low saddle near the south end of Mazama Ridge and
extended into the basin now occupied by the Reflection Lakes. You can
see the yellowish-orange deposit in the first roadcut west of the lakes,
where it lies on top of gray glacial deposits.

[Illustration: Avalanche deposits in the White River valley. The
rockfalls and avalanches from Little Tahoma Peak formed a mass of
reddish-gray rock debris that contrasts with the darker gray glacial
debris deposited by Emmons Glacier within the last century. The
avalanche deposits are about 1,500 feet across at their widest point.
(Fig. 20)]

The avalanche probably was wet when it crossed the Paradise area, and
the moisture in it may have already been present in the rocks in which
the avalanche originated. The mass was fluid enough to move down the
Paradise and Nisqually River valleys as a mudflow hundreds of feet
thick, and the resulting deposits extend at least 18 miles downstream
from the volcano. The volume of rock that slid off to produce the
mudflow may have been as much as 100 million cubic yards—or roughly
enough to cover a 1-mile-square area to a depth of 100 feet.

At about the same time as the Paradise avalanche and mudflow occurred, a
tremendous rock mass also slid off the east side of the volcano in the
area between Steamboat Prow and Little Tahoma Peak. This slide formed a
mudflow on the floor of the White River valley that was several hundred
feet deep at the north boundary of the park and that extended at least
30 miles beyond the base of the volcano. The most remarkable feature of
the deposit left by this mudflow is its surface, which is dotted with
scores of mounds 5-35 feet high and as much as several hundred feet in
diameter. These mounds have cores of huge rocks which are similar in
size to those scattered on the surface of the avalanche deposits from
Little Tahoma Peak. You can see the mounds best in an area which is a
few miles north of the park boundary, west of the White River, and which
can be reached by the Huckleberry Creek Forest Road. The total volume of
this mudflow deposit may be as much as one-fifth of a cubic mile.

These great landslides and mudflows were followed shortly by another
whose size surpassed that of anything before or since. This was the
remarkable Osceola Mudflow, which streamed down the valleys of the White
River and West Fork about 5,800 years ago. When these great rivers of
mud joined in the White River valley, they formed an even larger mudflow
which swiftly flowed downvalley for a distance of 15 miles and then
spread beyond the Cascade mountain front into the Puget Sound lowland.
There the mudflow submerged a total area of more than 100 square miles
to depths as great as 70 feet and buried the sites of the present towns
of Enumclaw and Buckley. One tongue of it even flowed into an arm of
Puget Sound, south of Seattle, that has since been filled with river
deposits to form the fertile valley occupied by the towns of Kent,
Auburn, Sumner, and Puyallup.

The Osceola Mudflow is remarkable in that it affected areas so far from
its place of origin. This long distance of travel was due to its great
volume, which we estimate to have been more than half a cubic mile, and
to the abundance of slippery clay in it. The clay had been formed by the
alteration of rocks in the volcano by hot gases and solutions over many
centuries.

[Illustration: The northeast flank of Mount Rainier. A remnant of the
Osceola Mudflow lies at the summit of Steamboat Prow in the center. Two
and one-half miles to the left is Little Tahoma Peak, from whose steep
north face at least seven large masses of rock fell in 1963. Mount Adams
volcano can be seen at the left, and Mount Hood, Oregon, in the far
distance. (Fig. 21)]

Where did the Osceola Mudflow originate on the volcano? This we must
deduce from several lines of evidence. The mudflow occurred so long ago
that there is no historical record, and volcanic events since that time
have covered up part of the scar it left on the volcano. Remnants of the
Osceola Mudflow veneer the sides and ridges of Glacier Basin, and a
small amount of it is even preserved at the top of Steamboat Prow, at an
altitude of 9,700 feet (fig. 21). This distribution tells us that the
slides responsible for the mudflow originated somewhere on the volcano
above Steamboat Prow. But now there is no great chasm in the side of the
volcano large enough to have provided a source of the mudflow; so we
must consider a former summit of the volcano itself as a possible
source.

I. C. Russell, one of the first geologists to study Mount Rainier, wrote
in 1896 that the present summit of the volcano consists of a small lava
cone. Enclosing this cone is a broad depression whose rim is partly
preserved at Gibraltar Rock, Point Success, and Liberty Cap (fig. 11).
High points on the rim indicate that the former summit of the volcano
above an altitude of about 14,000 feet was removed in some way. The
destruction of the old summit, which may have reached a height of 16,000
feet, left a broad east-facing depression in the top of the volcano
between Gibraltar Rock and Russell Cliff. The depression has since been
mostly filled by the recent lava cone. You can see these features best
from high points east of the mountain.

Our best explanation of how the former top of the volcano was removed
also solves the problem of finding an adequate source of material for
the Osceola Mudflow. Before 5,800 years ago, the topmost part of Mount
Rainier probably consisted of rock that had been weakened by hot
volcanic fumes and solutions and partly converted to clay. Then, this
mass of weak rock was jostled off or pushed off by a volcanic explosion
and slid down the northeast side of the volcano. One or more of these
mighty avalanches of moist clay and rock resulted in the Osceola
Mudflow.

Large avalanches have also occurred many times during the last 3,000
years on the west side of the volcano. Sunset Amphitheater (fig. 11) is
part of the large scar left by them. About 2,800 years ago one of these
avalanches created a mudflow in the valleys of the South Puyallup River
and Tahoma Creek that was temporarily deep enough to submerge Round Pass
(on the West Side Road) to a depth of nearly 400 feet. This is
especially remarkable when we see that Round Pass itself is 600-700 feet
above the nearby valley floors. Another deep mudflow, started by an
avalanche at Sunset Amphitheater, moved down the Puyallup River valley
about 600 years ago and buried the site of the present town of Orting in
the Puget Sound lowland under 15 feet of mud and rock.

Table 2.—_Summary of important geologic events in the history of Mount
Rainier National Park_

Geologic Years ago Geologic events in the area of the park
time scale

“Postglacial” Present summit cone of Mount Rainier
probably was built about 2,000 years
ago. The last known pumice eruption
occurred between 1820 and 1854.
Glaciers started to grow and advance
about 3,000 years ago. Maximum
extents were reached about 1850 A.D.
From then until about 1955, glaciers
were receding; now they are in
balance or advancing.
Huge masses of rock have slid from the
volcano repeatedly during the last
10,000 years. One of these destroyed
the summit of Mount Rainier and
formed the Osceola Mudflow about
5,800 years ago.
10,000
Pleistocene Last major glaciation.
(Ice Age)
25,000
Birth and growth of Mount Rainier
volcano, and repeated glaciation.
2-3 million
Pliocene Uplift and erosion of the Cascade Range.
12 million
Miocene Intrusion of granodiorite.
Folding of older rocks.
Deposition of Fifes Peak and Stevens
Ridge Formations.
26 million
Oligocene Deposition of Ohanapecosh Formation.
37-38 million
Eocene Deposition of Puget Group.
53-54 million

Avalanches and mudflows like those described are normal events at Mount
Rainier and are expected to happen again in the future. Almost any cliff
on the volcano can produce a large rockfall, but which cliff will
collapse next, or when, cannot be predicted. Should the volcano again
become active, earthquakes and volcanic explosions would trigger
avalanches and mudflows that would rush down the mountain. Molten rock
would melt snow and ice at the volcano’s summit and send floods of water
down the volcano’s flanks. These indirect effects of an eruption would
be much more hazardous than lava flows and pumice, if eruptions are on a
scale similar to that of the past 10,000 years.

The Volcano’s Future?

An active volcano changes continually. Repeated eruptions build the cone
by piling one lava flow on top of others, or on top of other volcanic
formations. Simultaneously, the combined processes of erosion wear the
volcano down. The relative importance of the two processes—one building,
the other destroying—is reflected in the volcano’s shape. The scarred
and deeply gouged sides of Rainier’s cone show that erosion has been
dominant here for a long time. Is Mount Rainier now doomed to continued
piecemeal destruction until the lofty cone is reduced to a featureless
mound? Will future eruptions of lava restore some of the volcano’s bulk?
Or will the volcano erupt violently some day, and then collapse as did
Mount Mazama to form the deep basin of Crater Lake? The answers may not
be known for centuries—or they may appear tomorrow.