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question of Rainier’s precise
     elevation. “Never before has there been such an excursion,” the Portland
Oregonian
reported, and quoted a leader thusly as he informed those they met along the way:
     “We were the pick and flower of Portland; our boys were all fleet of foot and strong
     of limb and our girls were all young and handsome.”
    The climbers arrived at Longmire, a base in the old-growth forest with hot springs
     for bathing. Then it was upward and onward, by foot to a meadow at Paradise camp.
     There, the climbers met a self-confident woman and her husband, an engaging, hyperkinetic
     man loaded down with camera equipment: “A certain Mr. E .S. Curtis of Seattle,” the
     Mazama journal noted. Clara, the mother of two young children, had no plans to aim
     for the summit, but she loved tramping around the high country with her husband. Curtis
     knew the mountain like his living room. He warned the climbers just before nightfall:
     should they awaken to a sound—“a deep, hoarse roar”—it would be an avalanche, off
     in the distance. Enjoy it, he said.
    The expedition was a massive undertaking, involving four tons of gear, two beef steers,
     seven milk cows, assorted beasts of burden and a brass band. That first night in Paradise,
     Curtis was summoned to help with an emergency: a man from California, “not accustomed
     to the dangerous vagaries of mountain storms in the Northwest,” in the Mazamas’ official
     account, had gone missing. Curtis set off in the darkness without hesitation, his
     wife unfazed. “Never shall I forget the heroic example that Mrs. Curtis gave us of
     womanly courage when she bade her hushed goodbye as he started out into the fog, the
     gale, and the dangerous darkness of the mountain the first night in camp,” wrote Dr.
     Weldon Young, the team’s doctor. They found the frightened, shivering Californian
     on snow two miles from camp. This rescue, and Curtis’s expertise on the mountain,
     so impressed the Mazamas that they asked him to lead their expedition. Curtis agreed.
     He also welcomed all female climbers who wanted to make a go for the top, and named
     one young woman from Portland, Ella McBride, as a coleader. McBride was a schoolteacher,
     with great stamina and athleticism that Curtis admired. Per a Mazama request, Curtis
     gave in to one custom of the club: the ladies were required to wear bloomers.
    After a prayer, up into the clouds they went in single file, accompanied by a slow-trudging,
     often slipping group of musicians carrying heavy instruments. Just before dusk, when
     they reached the snow camp named for the naturalist John Muir, the party was ordered
     by Curtis to cook up soup and stew, then bed down before nightfall. The brass band
     played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and all went to sleep. They rose a few hours later,
     just after midnight, stomping their calked boots on compressed ice, a fat moon overhead,
     blankets wrapped around their upper bodies. Frozen lips pressed against frigid mouthpieces
     as the band tried to give their Mazama partners a tuneful sendoff. The first hour
     was all doubts and cold hands, Curtis encouraging the climbers to stay positive: it
     would get better after sunrise. They had so many questions:
What should they eat?
Very little. Their stomachs would be turbulent from the altitude.
How slippery would the ice be?
Hard, until midday.
Are there many crevasses?
Numerous ones, some hidden by snow bridges, deep and dangerous. Prod first with the
     alpenstock before taking a step.
    The push to the summit was a steady march past monoliths of rotten rock and aged ice.
     Sunrise came with a burst of rose-colored light and a view of the long blue wall of
     the Cascade range just to the east. As the day went on, the sun softened the snow,
     making it difficult to walk. The altitude made several climbers sick; they dug into
     the snow to wait out the climb. By 3:30 in the afternoon, what was left of the main
     party crested