fter eight hours in the black-and-white world above Mount Rainier’s
tree line, where even in August all about was snow and rock, Hazard
Stevens stared down into the crevasse separating him from the moun-
tain’s 14,410-foot summit. Twenty feet across, immeasurably deep, the
chasm gleamed emerald green all the way down.
It was high summer, 1870. In recent decades, mountaineers had sum-
mited Baker, Hood, Shasta, and every other volcano punctuating the Cascade Range from the
Canadian border to Northern California—except the tallest: Rainier. The seismic giant had humbled
half a dozen climbers. All were more experienced than Stevens, who to this point had ascended
nothing higher than the bloodied rolling hills of Petersburg, Virginia, during the Civil War.
Nine days and 90 miles of slogging toward the fifth highest peak in the continental United
States had brought Stevens, 28, and his companion, Philemon Beecher Van Trump, 31, to an
A
40 AMERICAN HISTORY
Hazard was his name,
and high-rock chance-taking
was this daredevil’s game
By Jessica Wambach Brown
Man vs.
Mountain