Ever Wild: A Lifetime on Mount Adams

Darryl Lloyd
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the crevasses: “The terrific pressure behind and the unyielding stone wall in
front, have cracked the glacier into huge chasms longitudinally to the movement
of the mass. We looked with horror into green, slippery walled fissures
of unknown depth.”
The earliest published photos of Mount Adams came a few years
later, appearing in 1886 in a Portland publication, The West Shore. In the
accompanying article, Professor William D. Lyman of Whitman College
incorrectly hypothesized that Mount Adams volcano was one hundred
miles wide and the source of vast basalt flows in southern Washington.
Lyman described six glaciers on Mount Adams: “one on Bacon Creek
[Hellroaring Creek], one on White Salmon River, one on Lewis River, and
three on different forks of the Klickitat River.” Within a year or so, sheepherders
named three of the glaciers: White Salmon, “Hell-Roaring” (later
renamed Mazama), and Klickitat.
Mount Adams played second fiddle in prominence at least through
the end of the 1800s, when “the geographies and the reference books”
listed its height at 9,570 feet. As late as 1924, C. E. Rusk noted that some
books “even to this day perpetuate the old slander, and persist in reiterating
the stereotyped figures [9,570 feet].” This astounding error originated
from topographers thinking Adams (12,276 feet) and St. Helens (9,677
feet) were about equal in height. Both mountains revealed about
one-mile-vertical extents of snow, rock, and ice. But the uppermost
elevation of tree growth on St. Helens is limited by recent explosive eruptions
and pyroclastic flows; on Mount Adams, timberline elevation is
governed by climate, aspect, and other factors such as soil conditions
and recent glaciation.
Bounded by the Yakama Reservation to the east, Mount Adams stands
alone in an unpopulated part of Washington. The great mountain dominates
the communities of Trout Lake and Glenwood, which occupy valleys
on its south and southeast sides. Each community has slightly fewer than
five hundred residents, and most are engaged in logging and agriculture.
Only a few businesses are connected with tourist activities that focus on
the mountain.
Much of the lower eastern flanks of Mount Adams are within the closed
part of the Yakama Reservation, which is off-limits to all but tribal members.
Permission to enter is rarely granted. The Yakama Nation Mount
Adams Recreation Area (also called “Tract D”) occupies a splendid corner
of the mountain on its east and southeast sides.
Historically both the Forest Service and Yakama Nation have somewhat
limited the mountain’s recreational use, because of its geographic
isolation, wilderness or primitive-use management, and road access.
However, growing numbers of climbers, day hikers, and other recreationists
have created the need for plans to further protect the “overlooked
giant.”