Mountains

As most of you know I always wanted to live in Seattle ever since I passed through here in the Navy in the early 50s. And then I got here again a very long time ago (late 1960s).  I even drove a little way up Mount Rainer with Pete Gross, a friend and co-worker of mine.  We had been to a professional meeting in Portland, Oregon and decided (at our own expense) to drive to Seattle and look around before going back to Columbus. I managed to schedule another meeting in Seattle itself in the early 1970s – The director of the Ohio Division of Special Education often did not attend the national Directors of Special Education annual meetings. – So Mount Rainier has been prominent in my thinking for a long time. I knew it was big but never paid any attention as to actually how big it was.

I knew that Mount Everest was the tallest mountain in the world. Living in the Seattle area the focus is on Mount Rainier and then Mount Baker for being pretty important. I never thought they were close in height to Everest, but then again I didn’t realize how far down the list they really were. Because we can see Mount Rainer on a clear day, I got to wondering about how high Mount Rainier really is.

Infoplease listing of high mountains shows Everest being the tallest at 29,035 in the Himalayas located between Nepal and Tibet. There are 121 mountains on the list going down to 20, 013 for Marmolego in the Andes located between Argentina and Chile.

Mount Rainer is 14,690  or 14,410 depending on which list you check. Another list for the United States shows there are 93 mountains higher than 14,000 feet, the tallest being Mount McKinley in Alaska at 20,320 going down to Sunshine Peak in Colorado at 14,001

There are three listed for Washington. In addition to Mount Rainer, there are Point Success at 14,158 and Liberty Cap at 14,112. See more here (look in text for #1 Mount Rainier). We also hear about Mount Baker, but is it only listed at about 10,781 give or take a few feet. I noticed all the mountains  measurements seem to vary by a few feet depending on the source, but you get the concept of it. 

Joe

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Photo - This is about as clear a view as we get of Mount Rainier. Some call it the ghost mountain. That it is.