No One Wants to Believe Our Mountains Might Be Shrinking

Establishing Mount Rainier as a shrinking mountain was no easy feat. In a deeply reported feature for Outside, Peter Frick-Wright follows Seattle University engineering professor and elite climber Eric Gilbertson up the volcano on a brutal one-day push to re-measure Washington's signature peak with high-precision GPS gear and ground-penetrating radar. Gilbertson's surveys—met with much skepticism before being backed by peer-reviewed journals—show Rainier's true high point is no longer the long-assumed ice dome of Columbia Crest, but a nearby rock outcrop. Though the outcrop's height depends on which "sea level" standard you use, Gilbertson's calculation puts it at 14,399.6 feet, not 14,410.

The shift isn't just a cartographic footnote. Gilbertson's data indicate Columbia Crest is thinning by nearly a foot a year, part of a broader climate-change-driven pattern he's documented on other once-permanently iced summits in Washington and beyond. Yet getting that reality accepted—by Mount Rainier National Park, Wikipedia editors, and federal mapping authorities—has proved almost as grueling as the climb itself. "You'd be surprised how tricky it is to figure out the actual height of a mountain; how difficult it is to talk about loss in a way that won't be torn apart online," writes Frick-Wright. For the full story, including the human cost behind the project, read his full piece at Outside.