I saw all of Rainier for the first time.
My heart skipped a couple of beats.
It's just like this fantastically hot woman standing right there and it's like I could
be with that woman.
I just was floored.
I was totally blown away.
I couldn't believe that it was that big.
I knew that this was home.
It's a really powerful feeling to go there.
It's restorative to be there in that almost sacred place.
I grew up on this mountain.
That's where I learned to ski.
That's where I put on skis for the first time.
I've lived in Washington my whole life.
It's very, very different than it used to be and it's surprising to see how fast that
change is happening.
And I think most people don't realize it's the rate at which the change is happening
over the course of even 50 years.
It's something that we've created through our own mistreatment.
Like people know about climate change.
People know that humans have accelerated it.
It's quite noticeable in the last 50 years that there's been a decline in the snowpack.
We hear stories of the Nisqually Glacier back in the 60s extending all the way down to the
Nisqually Bridge.
I've been skiing on Mount Rainier for 25 years.
When I first started going up there from the Nisqually Bridge, you could see the tip of
the Nisqually Glacier and that's totally gone.
There used to be Paradise Ice Caves.
They had miles of mapped caves that you could go through.
They were impressive.
It was a natural wonder of the world and you go there now and you look into that valley
and there's nothing left but rocks.
And so what used to just be, boom, Glacier is gone, there's nothing left.
Even the mirror snowfields themselves over the decades I've skied down in the summer
to get my summer turns and now it's less and less every year that goes by.
On the mirror snowfield, obviously you're going to see big differences between what
you have in the winter snowpack and what you have in the summer, but I see rock ridges
and everything.
It seems like they're bigger.
What I've seen is a real retreat of the glaciers where I really see that is on the
Emmons route.
Really looking at Emmons, it just seemed diminished.
I could see all the recession that had happened.
I can see it in the pattern of where the moraine is and where it looks really raw, like it's
just been exposed yesterday.
We used to do their cout, climbing route well into August and we've kind of cut those
off just because of trickier conditions and the ice chute as the cout's glacier recedes.
The cout's glacier is like totally melted out.
There's a lot more exposed ice on the upper mountain.
The climate itself is getting warmer.
Maybe the glaciers were already retreating, but we've hastened that retreat considerably.
The resource that we have here with Mount Rainier, super special.
I think everyone who comes out here recognizes that.
People flying in or out of Seattle get a great view of it.
It actually surprised me how many people in Seattle have never even really driven up just
take a look at it, but I think it's just iconic because it's so visible and it's always there.
It's one of those iconic places.
It's amazing that we've set it aside.
It was one of our original national parks.
It's different than a city park.
You're out there in the wilderness and you get to see them out and experience it.
You surround everything with cities and roads and buildings.
You still have this island of wilderness.
Rainier is a really unique place to backcountry ski because it just has a little bit of everything.
You have this sub-alpine alpine kind of zone that's just fantastic in the Cascades.
Glaciers are super fun to ski down because they're so open and exposed.
They're just yummy.
Glacier is such a beautiful, pristine environment.
It's very powerful and it's really incredible to get to ski upon it.
It's awesome.
I went up in the middle of winter and it was that deep a pow and I was like, oh my god,
this is incredible, but most people aren't in the mountains.
They're not experienced in nature.
You get to see a lot of the world from the top of the mountain.
You get to see a lot of the world from the top of the mountain and you get to see it.
You get to see a lot of the world from the top of the mountain and you get to see it.
Maybe, in some way, it's that connection for people to have a connection to nature.
Like, whoa, this beautiful place exists.
We should keep it.
You kind of need that because if wilderness isn't accessible and people aren't willing
to see it, then they don't really care about it.
