Ideas to insulate Mount Rainier’s melting glaciers with tarps, or cover them with millions of reflective glass beads, are signs we’re not yet confronting the real problem. (Kori Suzuki / The Seattle Times, 2022)
By Danny Westneat Seattle Times columnist
Scott Beason has worked on and around the ice of Mount Rainier for nearly two decades. When I asked if he could see it changing in that time, he gave a kind of rueful laugh.
“Lately we’ve had some glaciers retreating 3 to 6 feet per day in the summertime,” Beason said. “You can definitely see that. It’s climate change before your eyes.”
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Beason, the Mount Rainier National Park geologist, just published a piercing paper about our mountain, the ice king of America. (It has the most glacier ice of any peak in the Lower 48.)
Using a photo-imaging technique for estimating 3D volumes called “structure from motion,” Beason and three other researchers compiled the most precise review yet of just how much glacial ice is up there.
The story is not good. Mount Rainier is melting.
One of the mountain’s 29 glaciers, the south-facing Stevens, has withered away entirely, the review found. Two more, Pyramid and Van Trump glaciers, lost 42% of their ice volumes just between 2015 and 2021, when the latest aerial photos were taken.
“That’s a massive amount of ice loss in a short period of time,” Beason said. “It was just alarming to see the rate that those two glaciers have disappeared.”
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