Carbon Glacier 08/06/06

The carbon glacier is the lowest glacier in the continental U.S. It's located in the northeast corner of Mount Rainier National Park. It runs all the way down to about 1800 feet above sea level.

I did a hike by the Carbon Glacier in early August. I went with a group of people I met through the Under the Hill Rovers group, which is the not-so-old subgroup of the Mountaineers, Seattle's local hiking and outdoors group.

We hiked on a particularly warm day. The wooded sections of the hike were quite nice, with the exception of the bugs.

Along the way we ran into a couple locals





The views were ok


Yes folks, that is a glacier looking at. There's a reason it's called the carbon glacier. That's a lot of volcanic debris. If you didn't know any better you might not even think there's any snow and ice in there.
The river flowing out is snowmelt. You'll have to trust me on that one.

You can see the leading edge of the glacier is pretty abrupt. Rocks and boulders on the top layer will crumble off and crash down below into the river. It's a pretty wild display of nature at work.

The carbon river: a slow trickle compared to its springtime flow

It's nice to see this sign AFTER you (and 4 other people) cross the bridge.

Heading home... and playing by the rules (well sorta - got the one person at a time thing down this time; We'll work on the bouncing part another day).