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Secure in their cave—though their clothes were sweat-
drenched on one side and frozen on the other—the moun-
taineers woke nauseated from sulphur in the steam. Outside
the wind was up, and the sky dark with storm clouds. Ste-
vens scratched Coleman’s name from their brass plate and
returned to Crater Peak, wedging the memento and the can-
teen in a cracked boulder. He and Van Trump, seeing the
third, lower peak from a distance, named it Takoma before
reversing their path toward camp, 8,000 feet below.
Near the end of their long descent, Van Trump slipped,
sliding 40 icy feet before loose rocks stopped him, in the
process gashing his thigh. A few hours later, the two men
hobbled into their empty camp. They were famished, but
Sluiskin was out hunting. Stevens prepared a meal of mar-
mot so offensive that Van Trump observed, “I don’t think the
General had taken an elaborate course in domestic science.”
When Sluiskin returned, he at first thought he was seeing
ghosts, then praised Stevens and Van Trump as “strong men
with brave hearts.” In the morn-
ing, the trio began trekking out, at
Stevens’s insistence following the
Nisqually River basin. This route
cut their time by a third, height-
ening Van Trump’s suspicions
that Sluiskin had taken the Tatoosh route out of greed. “It
was a specimen of aboriginal graft,” he wrote. At Bear Prairie
they found Coleman, well-fed and in jolly spirits. The white
men bid adieu to Sluiskin and after waiting out a three-day
rainstorm, returned to Yelm.
Stevens and Van Trump arrived in Olympia a few days
later by way of the Longmires’ horse-drawn carry-all, their
summit flags flying from the carriage. Lean and sun-
scorched from the 240-mile journey, Stevens likened him-
self and his buddy to “veterans returning from an arduous
and glorious campaign.”
Given the mountain’s reputation and their relative lack of
Tempting Target
Hazard Stevens eyed
Mount Rainier for
years before he and
a partner completed
an epic ascent.