Mount Rainier

Mount Rainier National Park was established in 1899 in Washington State and was the fifth national park in the United States. It protects some 956 km² around the volcano of the same name, an active stratovolcano of 4,392 metres that dominates the skyline of Seattle and Tacoma.

Rainier holds the largest glacier system in the contiguous United States, with twenty-five named glaciers covering its slopes and constituting the largest mass of permanent ice south of Alaska. That combination of active volcano and ice makes it one of the volcanoes regarded as most dangerous in the country: the main risk is not lava flows but lahars, avalanches of mud and meltwater that can travel down the valleys into densely populated areas, and several communities around it have dedicated warning systems.

Below the ice, the park preserves old-growth forests of large conifers and, in the middle belt, the subalpine meadows of Paradise and Sunrise, famous for their summer flowering and for receiving some of the heaviest snowfalls measured on the planet. The wildlife includes mountain goat, Olympic marmot, black bear and Roosevelt elk.