Popularity Climbing Overlooked For Years, Mount Adams Comes Into Its Own As Outdoor Playground

It’s the misnamed mountain, the misrepresented giant.

Until the last decade or so, Mount Adams arguably has been the least known of the Cascade Range’s lofty peaks.

Situated on federally designated wilderness and Indian nation lands southwest of Yakima, the 12,276-foot mountain - the second-highest in the Pacific Northwest - cannot be seen from Western Washington or Western Oregon.

Compared to its more popular cousins Rainier, St. Helens and Hood Adams’ trails and wildflower fields have been far less traveled as a result. But that’s changing as an increasing number of hikers and campers discover its easy climb and pristine wilderness.

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that more than 400 people may climb the mountain’s southern route on a sunny, summer weekend day. Over 6,000 people scaled the peak last year.

“It really is the overlooked mountain, but it shouldn’t be,” said climber Darryl Lloyd of Glenwood, Wash.

Photo books of the Washington mountains have sometimes miscaptioned Mount Adams. “When they show St. Helens with Adams in the background, it will be called Rainier,” Lloyd said.

But misrepresentation has long been part of the mountain’s history.

When explorers Lewis and Clark spotted the sloping, snow-covered volcano in 1805, they called it “perhaps the highest pinnacle in America.” However, they mistook it for Mount St. Helens, which already had been documented by Gen. George Vancouver.

It was hit-and-miss even for cartographers.

Hall J. Kelley, an Oregon enthusiast, envisioned a “Presidents Range” in the 1830s, in which all of the Cascades’ peaks would be named after U.S. presidents. He intended Mount St. Helens to bear the name of John Adams, the nation’s second president.

But his mapper placed the name too far east, renaming the mountain then called Pahto by the Yakama Indians. The name Adams eventually stuck and Gov. Isaac Stevens officially added it to the state map in 1853, when railroad surveyors finally documented its location.

Lore has several stories of how Mount Adams came to be.

One version, taken from John Williams’ 1912 book, “The Guardians of the Columbia,” has two Indian chiefs, one from what is now Washington and the other from Oregon, falling in love with the same woman - a beautiful maiden named Loowit.

When Loowit couldn’t decide which chief to give her love to, the men went to war.

The chief of the gods, Tyhee Saghalie, was angered at their battle and killed all three.

However, he decided that they had been beautiful in life and therefore they should all be beautiful in death. So he turned them into three snow peaks - the Guardians of the Columbia. One chief, Wiyeast, became Mount Hood, the other, Klickitat, became Mount Adams and Loowit became Mount St. Helens.

Detailed geologic studies on the mountain have been conducted only recently because of the volcano peak’s quiet nature and remote location, according to a report published this year by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The report said Adams hasn’t erupted for 1,000 years, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be as spectacular as Mount St. Helens in 1980.

Ash clouds probably wouldn’t shoot skyward. Instead, avalanches and debris flows likely would move down into towns, forests and rivers below, the report said.

At the 210-acre summit plateau, Mount Adams offers views of Rainier to the west, St. Helens to the southwest and Hood to the south.

“I love the mountain,” Lloyd said. “I’m a photographer now, and I’ve developed a reverence for the place because it’s so fabulously beautiful and it has such a variety in features and scenery,” “There’s so much to this mountain. You couldn’t possibly know it completely.”

For novice climbers, the southern route to the top is a relatively easy climb that does not require any rope, although rangers warn that white-out blizzards, avalanches and falls can occur at any time.

It takes about eight hours to hike from Cold Springs Campground at the base to the summit.

“It’s probably the easiest volcano peak except for St. Helens for nontechnical climbing,” said Mary Bean, wilderness program manager with the Mount Adams Ranger District.

“It has an inherent potential for risk,” she said. “It’s an elevation gain from 2,000 to 12,000 feet. You’re talking about a 10,000-foot elevation gain, and in certain conditions that could kill you.

“There’s some people, heaven knows how they survive. We have people coming down from the mountain in tennis shoes and with no extra water.”

Although Mount Adams doesn’t get nearly as many visitors as Mount Rainier National Park - which tops out at about 2 million visitors every year - Forest Service officials are worried about the usage increase.

Rangers have counted more than 260 campsites on the southern route alone, Bean said. The Forest Service believes the climbing numbers and the environmental damage will continue to increase if measures aren’t taken.

That’s why the agency is planning to limit the number of people climbing and create a $15 fee to pay for repairs and maintenance.

Rangers have also canceled an annual Mount Adams climb started by the Greater Yakima Chamber of Commerce in 1966. The group gathering was considered detrimental to the fragile alpine wilderness.

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