Back in the mid-’80s, I was at Ft. Lewis, Washington (now Joint Base Lewis-McChord) for a training course in those Pacific Northwest rain forests and mountains. We had one weekend off, and since three of my buddies and I had obviously not already spent enough time “humping the boonies,” as the saying goes, we decided on that Saturday to go hike nearby Mt. Rainier. Dominating the skyline in the south Seattle/Tacoma area, Mt. Rainier is a volcano, like the rather infamous Mt. St. Helens, although it was certainly inactive that fine, sunny Saturday. We didn’t hike to the top, but we did make it up to the tree line, and I took some impressive photos with a cheap 35mm pocket camera, most of which I’ve lost over the years.
I remember we stood there, admiring the vistas and talking about how puny the mountains can make a human feel. What we didn’t discuss was the fact that his noble peak is a volcano and what might happen were it to erupt. But now, vulcanologists — geologists who study volcanoes — are looking at what might happen in that event, and it’s not good.
“Mount Rainier keeps me up at night because it poses such a great threat to the surrounding communities. Tacoma and South Seattle are built on 100-foot-thick (30.5-meter) ancient mudflows from eruptions of Mount Rainier,” Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist and ambassador for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said on an episode of “Violent Earth With Liv Schreiber,” a CNN Original Series. […]
— Read More: redstate.com
