Emmons Glacier and the summit
— — the longest tongue of ice in the lower forty-eight.
Not only on a wall.
“The Emmons sweeps down the northeast side of Rainier in a long pale curve, four and a half miles from the summit cap to its terminus above the White River. From the Sunrise Visitor Center the whole flank reads at once — crevasse fields, the rock spine of Steamboat Prow, and the cone above where Liberty Cap and Columbia Crest meet the sky. Climbers on the standard route up this side leave Camp Schurman at midnight to be off the upper mountain before the sun softens it. From the valley floor below, the glacier looks still. From the lateral moraine, you can hear it shift. The summit is 14,410 feet; the ice carries roughly four square miles of the mountain on its back. — from the studio
Emmons Glacier and the summit, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Emmons Glacier is on the northeast flank of Mount Rainier, in Mount Rainier National Park, Pierce County, Washington. It descends from the 14,410-foot summit to a terminus near 5,000 feet above the headwaters of the White River. By surface area — roughly 4.3 square miles — it is the largest glacier in the contiguous United States. The Winthrop Glacier sits just north of it across the rock spine of Steamboat Prow; the two together carry most of the ice on Rainier's east side. The standard view is from Sunrise, the highest point in the park reachable by road at 6,400 feet, on State Route 410.
Mount Rainier is an active stratovolcano of the Cascade arc, last erupting roughly 1,000 years ago and still considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the country because of the populated lahar paths below it. The summit caldera holds two craters under a 100-foot ice cap. The mountain stands about 14,410 feet, the fifth-highest peak in the contiguous United States. Twenty-five named glaciers ride its flanks; the Emmons is the longest at about 4.3 miles. The route up the Emmons-Winthrop is the second most popular summit climb after Disappointment Cleaver on the south side and runs through Camp Schurman at 9,500 feet.
The Sunrise road, the main access for viewing the Emmons, is closed in winter and typically opens in late June or early July, depending on snow. It is the last part of the park to open each year. From the visitor centre, the Burroughs Mountain trail and the Emmons Vista overlook both put the glacier directly in the field of view. Climbing season on the Emmons-Winthrop route runs roughly May through September, with a climbing permit required from the park. Sunrise from Sunrise — the parking lot's namesake light at first light — is most dramatic in late summer, when the ice and the sky take on the same pink for about ten minutes.