When clouds clear to reveal a sun-cloaked Mount Rainier, Washington's premier outdoor playground advertises itself.

"We call it the calling card," said Debbie Brenchley, a backcountry ranger at Mount Rainier National Park. "When the mountain's out, people come."

They come toting 60-pound backpacks bulging with enough gear and food to encircle the mountain or scale its summit. They come with day packs and trail maps for a round-trip dash to a peak, pond or park.

They come with sleds, snowshoes, snowboards and at least four types of skis. They bring binoculars, bird books and botany guides. They ride bicycles, horses and snowmobiles. They bring freeze-dried noodles for a one-pot backcountry dinner or platinum MasterCards for a three-course meal served on the linen tablecloths of the Paradise Inn.

People lug lightweight mountaineering tents for Rainier's ever-changing high snowfields and drive 39-foot Winnebagos to assigned spots in a roadside campground. They stroll Paradise's paved trails in Gore-Tex jackets and Giorgio Armani suits, hiking boots and high heels. The smell of insect repellent blends with the fragrance of designer cologne.

Mount Rainier draws people by the thousands on sunny summer days, and the estimated annual visitor count has nudged or exceeded 2 million the past few years.

On a sunny Sunday in May, recent Northwest arrival Steve White waited in a line of 80 cars to pay the $10 entrance fee at the Nisqually gate. The mountain had advertised itself all weekend, and that Sunday the 55-year-old Edmonds resident couldn't resist making his first visit.

"It's such a dominant feature of the landscape. To me, it's such an awe-inspiring sight, I wanted to get closer to it," White said. "When the weather's lousy, there's no point in coming."

Some people come to make their 100th attempt at Rainier's summit, some to touch snow for the first time. All are drawn to the solitary mountain's promise of solitude, or its carefully preserved wilderness.

"Mount Rainier is one of the crown jewels in the national park system," said Brooke Drury, recreation resources manager for The Mountaineers, an outdoor group with 15,000 members in Washington. The peak is prime, but the proximity is its big plus.

"Having a 14,000-plus-foot peak within a very short distance of a major metropolitan area is not something you have very often," Drury said.

But that proximity lures visitors whose impacts can endanger that wilderness. For a century, preserving Mount Rainier's pleasure grounds from urban encroachment has been the job of National Park Service rangers and their predecessor in other agencies.

Assistant chief ranger Bill Larson, the park's visitor management specialist, said he occasionally reads a copy of the 1899 legislation that created Mount Rainier National Park. Its words call for officials to preserve the park's "wonders" for the "benefit and enjoyment of the people."

In the past, when the mountain's snow-clad slopes and giant trees seemed indestructible, promoting enjoyment was the chief goal. Yet, as people discovered Rainier's fragile side and slow-healing nature, park officials became increasingly protective.

Today, recreation typically takes a back seat to preservation.

"Where the resource is hurt, we stop the activity," Larson said. "We just cannot let it go. And if we're going to err, we're going to err on the side of protecting the resource."

It was not always so.

Evolution of Rainier recreation

Mount Rainier's earliest visitors were native hunters and gatherers who hiked its meadows in search of food. In the mid-19th century, European botanists, surveyors and explorers came in search of scientific data or riches. Until the mid-1800s, life was difficult and wild enough in Puget Sound's lowlands that few fun-seekers looked for adventure on remote peaks.

The lure of an unclimbed mountain began to attract summit attempts in the 1850s. Word of the mountain's scenic wonders and challenging terrain spread by the turn of the century, and early outdoor organizations such as the Portland-based Mazamas brought large groups to Rainier to camp, hike and climb.

Many early group outings had the feel of company picnics. Historical photographs show one-legged races through alpine meadows, where a climbing rope marked the finish line. Women dressed as wood nymphs pranced before audiences at torch-lit sylvan theaters.

Early visitors did not share what today is called the "no-trace" wilderness ethic. Fragile meadows became campsites. Fir trees were turned into tent poles or table legs. Bonfires were nightly events. Trash was bashed, burned and buried. Even naturalist John Muir, the Sierra Club founder who climbed Mount Rainier in 1888, typically made his bed out of boughs cut from nearby evergreens.

"In the old days, they didn't really think too much about impacts," said John Wilcox, the ranger in charge of Mount Rainier's backcountry areas. "People would go up to Paradise and think it was a neat thing to set a grove of subalpine firs on fire just to watch them burn."

Reports of such vandalism helped spark local pressure for creation of Mount Rainier National Park. Early proponents agreed that such lands should be protected and kept out of private hands, but they disagreed about why. Most hoped to set aside such scenic wonders to make them available for the widest possible variety of pleasurable uses. Only a handful sought wilderness preservation for its own sake.

"There were very few people advocating wilderness the way we legislate it today," said historian Theodore Catton, author of "Wonderland: An Administrative History of Mount Rainier National Park." Catton said most people in the late 1800s looked at the mountain as a potential playground for locals to enjoy.

"There was concern about logging and threats to the environment, but there was so much land still available," Catton said. Federal involvement was sought mostly as a way to bring in dollars for pleasure-enhancing developments such as better roads, he said.

The roads brought the automobile, which brought more tourists. They made their way to tent camps and hotels that by 1917 came under control of the newly formed Rainier National Park Co. Lured in part by company advertisements, visitors to the park grew from 30,000 in 1915 to 250,000 in 1929.

Company leaders sought even more visitors - especially out-of-state tourists - and suggested numerous development ideas over the years. The Park Service turned down many proposals, including plans for grand hotels with tennis courts and an aerial tram from the snout of the Nisqually Glacier to Paradise.

Others were approved, if only for a short time.

A nine-hole golf course was completed in 1931 in the valley below Paradise. Park officials allowed the course in the belief that golf was outdoor recreation and would not detract from the mountain setting. They later changed their minds, and the meadow was restored.

Paradise Valley also was the site of early motorcycle races. Contestants rode up the steep hillsides, their spinning wheels chewing into the soft alpine soil.

"It took them a long time to get the damage out of that," recalled Dick Vanderflute, owner of Parkland Sports and the operator of the last ski rope tow at Paradise.

In 1934, the National Park Service authorized construction of a boathouse on the shore of Reflection Lakes. Rainier National Park Co.'s guide department offered fishing trips and provided hiking gear, fishing tackle and a boat.

Guided horseback excursions around Paradise and Sunrise were popular well into the 1960s. Jerry Lynch, who worked at Paradise in the 1950s, used to solicit customers by hopping aboard in-bound tour buses wearing cowboy gear and giving his captive audience a promotional pitch.

"I looked like Buddy Holly with chaps on," said Lynch, now president of Rainier Mountaineering Inc., the park's primary climbing guide service.

Up to 30 saddle horses were kept at Paradise for rent by visitors who wanted to ride the 93-mile Wonderland Trail around the mountain. Two horse trips a day went on the more popular five-mile Skyline Trail past the hillsides and viewpoints above Paradise. Similar riding trips started out of Sunrise.

Outdoor groups brought their own horses. In 1948, the Sierra Club proposed a trip on the Wonderland Trail using 100 pack animals.

Lynch said the horses' hooves surely damaged Rainier's trails, but "there wasn't the awareness in those days."

Human eagerness also was destructive. Guided hiking trips to the glacial ice caves that once formed above Paradise were popular, but many visitors were impatient for the snow to melt naturally to reveal the caves' entrances. Sometimes folks sped the process along in midsummer by chopping or blasting openings in the ice large enough for people to enter.

"Nature coasting" was another popular activity during guided outings. Lines of people wearing protective pants would sit on a steep snowfield one behind the other in stair-step fashion, often with a guide in front and at the rear.

"When all were ready, the guide in front would lift his feet and the guide behind would shove off and the entire party would serpentine down the glacier whooping and yelling. It was good sport and no one was ever hurt much," wrote Floyd Schmoe in his 1959 book, "A Year in Paradise."

The Rainier National Park Co. encouraged winter activities as a way to lure tourists during the nine-month off-season. They built a wooden toboggan run at Longmire and opened a ski school at Paradise in December 1935. A motorized rope tow was installed two years later by David Hellyer, Chauncey Griggs and Jimmy Parker. By 1938, Paradise was Washington's leading ski resort.

Yet, calls by company officials and local ski clubs for more winter development - a permanent chairlift at Paradise, in particular - often met with resistance from the Park Service. A chairlift's steel support poles would detract from the mountain's alpine profile, many believed. Park officials stalled the project until the 1960s, by which time development at other Washington ski areas had taken the pressure off Paradise.

Even Otto Lang, director of the first ski school at Mount Rainier, said he is pleased Paradise wasn't turned into a winter resort similar to Sun Valley in Idaho or Aspen in Colorado.

"I'm so glad that they left the mountain untouched and as beautiful as it was," said Lang, now 91 and living in Seattle. "Once it becomes a ski resort, they have to have chairlifts."

An explosion in hiking

By the early 1960s, hikers and mountain climbers were coming to Mount Rainier in increasing numbers. As population surged in the Pacific Northwest and interest grew in outdoor recreation, people thronged to Rainier's backcountry areas. At the time, the Seattle-Tacoma area had the third-largest population of backpacking enthusiasts in the nation, all within a three-hour drive of the mountain.

Harvey Manning, co-author of a popular guide series that includes the book "50 Hikes in Mount Rainier National Park," said the sudden surge in Northwest backpacking took him by surprise. Manning said he was shocked in the mid-1950s when he first met a stranger on Cascade Pass.

"Along about then, when you saw somebody coming up the trail, you went out to greet them because they were sure to be a friend of yours," Manning said.

He said he stopped climbing Mount Rainier in the late 1950s. By then, too many people - especially inexperienced climbers - were using routes that he and his friends once had all to themselves, he said.

"The first time, there would be nobody else along the route. We'd be at Camp Muir, and there'd be nobody else at Camp Muir," he recalled. "It was a lonesome, old mountain."

Increasing numbers of boot-clad feet were damaging Rainier's backcountry areas. Overused trails became deep ruts. The shores of popular alpine lakes were trampled by campers who pitched tents at the water's edge. Bare ground and the evidence of campfires were common at backcountry campsites, particularly near overnight shelters.

Ranger Wilcox noticed the effects when he transferred to Mount Rainier National Park in 1972. Damage was especially apparent where people had camped amid the scenic flower fields of Indian Henry's Hunting Grounds.

"Big pieces of those meadows were being denuded because of their popularity," Wilcox said.

Campfires were common and virtually unregulated, but the damage they caused could last for years. Wilcox said a group of up to 75 Boy Scouts camping in Berkeley Park west of Sunrise in the late 1960s built a huge bonfire that got out of control.

"To this day, you could go up to Berkeley Park, and I could show you where that fire was built 30 years ago," he said.

A forum on National Park Service policies held at the University of Puget Sound in 1972 focused on the need to limit visitor access. Park officials had become convinced that too many visitors were destroying the sites' natural wonders.

"We're up to our ears in people," Mount Rainier Superintendent Daniel Tobin told the audience, "and people cause trouble in managing a wilderness resource." He announced that the park was preparing a backcountry management plan, and he put his rangers to work on its details during the winter of 1972-73.

"We made changes overnight," Wilcox recalled.

Most new rules applied to horse parties and overnight campers. Horse use was eliminated in the sensitive subalpine areas and relegated to about 100 miles of lowland trails. Grazing was no longer permitted.

Backcountry campfires were banned except in designated sites. Sensitive lakeshores were declared off-limits to tents and boats. The park's off-road areas were divided into three types of zones - trail, cross-country and alpine - with specific rules and overnight use restrictions.

Permits were required for all overnight backcountry camping. Because attempts to climb Rainier typically require at least one night spent at a high camp, the new rules limited the number of summit ascents.

Most people accepted the limits, but not all. After speaking out against the regulations, mountain climber Larry Penberthy requested permits for large climbing parties that he knew would not be allowed. When his requests were denied, Penberthy sued the park in August 1975.

In Penberthy v. Tobin et. al., a federal court upheld the government's right to restrict use but found merit in Penberthy's claim that the Park Service had established "arbitrary and capricious" restrictions. Limits on park use had to be backed up by hard data and submitted to public review, the court said. A ranger's experience and intuition weren't enough.

Park officials learned their lesson and embraced a scientific approach to backcountry management. When Penberthy sued a second time, in 1981, park officials had documented evidence on environmental impacts. The judge dismissed the long-running case in 1986.

Backpackers who didn't make reservations still grumble when they arrive at Mount Rainier to find that permits for all the campsites at popular destinations have been snapped up.

"They've got it so restricted now," said Bette Filley, author of a guidebook to the Wonderland Trail, which encircles the mountain. She said the pendulum has swung too far toward preservation.

"I think we've got to get back to the middle," Filley said. "Some of these little campsites, they've only got four or five spaces for people. That's not really overusing the backcountry as far as I'm concerned."

Yet, Wilcox said, the restrictions generally receive support from those familiar with past impacts.

"The meadows and the trail system are so much better now than they were a quarter-century ago," he said.

The footloose day hiker

Today, backcountry use is limited, campsites are marked and fires are prohibited. Climbers are restricted to what the high camps can hold. Horses no longer clomp through meadows. Operators of the ski rope tow packed up and left. The ice caves in the receding Paradise Glacier are no more, the victims of climate change and weather. The golf course and toboggan run are historical footnotes.

But one fact hasn't changed: Mount Rainier National Park is still a short drive from a major population center that is home to large numbers of outdoor enthusiasts. For them, most of the park lies within a day's walk of a parking lot.

One drawback to this proximity is that the park rarely offers as much wilderness solitude as other national parks.

Mount Rainier National Park's relatively small size also contributes to crowding. The 2 million visitors expected this year will squeeze onto 368 square miles, 97 percent of which is off-road wilderness.

North Cascades National Park is roughly twice as large as Mount Rainier yet saw roughly 33,000 visitors in 1998. Popular Olympic National Park, meanwhile, will see twice as many visitors as Mount Rainier but will spread them out over four times as much land and throughout the entire year.

"In Olympic National Park, you can hike for days and days and never see another person," backcountry ranger Brenchley said. "But if you hike for days and days here, you're back somewhere else."

That makes Mount Rainier largely a day hiker's park, Wilcox said. Yet, while backpackers' numbers are limited and monitored through the permit system, no one can really be sure how many people hit Rainier's trails and return later that same day. The number of overnight climbers and backpackers are known; any estimate of day hikers is a hunch.

Moreover, rangers no longer believe overnight campers cause the most impacts.

"Backpackers or climbers are more or less destination-oriented," Wilcox said. People lugging heavy packs "are not going laterally any more than they have to." Light-traveling day hikers, on the other hand, tend to wander and explore along the trail, often trampling sensitive plants in the process.

"They're mostly footloose and fancy-free, and they're going all over the place," Wilcox said.

Rangers who once saw the heaviest damage near overnight campsites now see more impacts at viewpoints and popular resting spots. The effects appear any place day hikers might drop their packs, stretch, munch a snack or wander a bit.

"Places where people eat their lunches on day hikes have the potential to be major impact areas," Wilcox said.

Park officials have tried to find creative ways to reduce the impacts, although some of their solutions appear deceptively simple. Logs and flat stones placed at popular stopping points provide hikers with a place to sit rather than a reason to rove. Hikers basking on the flat rocks of Panorama Point might believe they are taking advantage of convenient natural features. Most have no idea they are being creatively corralled.

Park officials also look for ways to limit the number of hikers on any particular trail.

"It's not just the number of impacts. It's the quality of the experience," Wilcox said. A trip up a trail won't be as enjoyable if hikers are "packed in like sardines" during what they hoped would be a wilderness experience, he said.

Limiting the numbers of day hikers isn't simple. Park officials have resisted making hikers obtain permits, knowing day permits would be unpopular and a bureaucratic headache. Instead, they have often tried to limit trail use by restricting the size of parking lots near popular trailheads.

"In other words, once the parking lot's filled, it's closed," Wilcox said.

The control measures sometimes go beyond the asphalt. Last summer, people heading to Comet Falls who found the trail's parking lot full could no longer park nearby on the shoulder of the road. Crews had set large rocks there to prevent the practice.

Wilcox admits that park officials are "kind of guessing that the size of the parking lot is right" for places such as Comet Falls. Few scientific means exist to determine how many people a trail can comfortably support.

New challenges

The evidence of increasing day use, however, seems clear to park officials.

Steve Winslow, the ranger who supervises the climbing program and coordinates searches and rescues, returned to work at Mount Rainier in 1996 after 4 1/2 years away. He was amazed to sometimes count more than 200 people a day slogging toward 10,080-foot Camp Muir on the snow above Pebble Creek.

"I would go up and down the Muir snowfield and couldn't believe the number of people," Winslow said. All were headed toward a climbers camp equipped with just two public outhouses.

Many hiking to Camp Muir slide down the mountain on skis or snowboards, which is permitted where the snow is deep, although it can scar underlying meadows when the snow peters out.

Nearly a vertical mile below Camp Muir, the meadows and hillsides of Paradise see more visitors in summer than any other place in the park. Keeping so many feet off sensitive plants keeps rangers busy.

"Kids have no idea. It's a city park to them, and they're all over the place," Wilcox said. "By and large, they have no idea of the fragility of the vegetation on the ground."

In the 1960s, many trails at Paradise were paved to cope with the tourist horde. In summer, those trails sprout signs in 12 languages that translate to, "Don't be a meadow stomper." It's one way rangers hope to educate foreign visitors who have been coming to the park in increasing numbers over the past decade.

"It's almost like starting over again to try to find a way to inform or sensitize those folks," Wilcox said. "Many come from backgrounds where environmentalism is not a part of their vocabulary." In Israel, for example, the focus is often on the security of people, not protection of the environment, he said.

Rangers preach the environmental gospel during what are called "meadow roves." Wilcox said rangers try to be instructional educators rather than rule enforcers.

"We don't want to be like cops in the meadows, saying, 'Don't do this, don't do that,'" he said.

Yet, increasing alongside the numbers at Mount Rainier is proof that enforced limits on use help damaged areas heal. Much of the evidence is coming from the recovery taking place on the park's western side, where a washout in 1990 closed Westside Road. The closure halted easy access to popular destinations such as St. Andrews Park, Klapatche Park and Emerald Ridge.

Since hiking to such places now means an overnight stay and requires a permit, the number of visitors has dropped dramatically. Time, restoration work and fewer feet have helped heal trampled meadows, but ranger Brenchley said damage is still visible in many areas.

"St. Andrews had been beat up in the past. It's slowly coming back, but there's a long ways to go," she said. "It will take years and years to recover."

The area's slow and pleasing recovery is one reason park officials haven't hurried to find a permanent solution to Westside Road's washout.

"We have to balance letting people enjoy the area and preserving it," Brenchley said. "Maybe it is time to focus on preservation a little bit."

Writer Manning admits that he misses the campfires he once enjoyed when he and friends had the mountains to themselves, but he doesn't miss the impacts caused by unregulated use. He said his last campfire at Mount Rainier was at Klapatche Park, a scenic meadow on the west side that at the time of his visit was crowded with weekend backpackers.

"There was hardly room to lay down your sleeping bag," Manning recalled, and the meadows "were just charcoal pits from one end to the other." Others had long ago burned all available firewood, he said, and campers were ripping up the meadow's heather to use as fuel.

Having witnessed such damage, Manning today is less sympathetic to those who complain about Rainier's rules.

"When people start bellyaching about the rangers being restrictive, I say, 'They're trying to save the land,'" he said. "It's up to us to do our best to cooperate."

One way Manning cooperates is by avoiding the park on days it is likely to be crowded. On sunny summer weekends, he leaves areas like Paradise to visitors from outside the region.

"There are people who have come 3,000 miles to see these meadows, and I don't want to get in their way," he said. "I find that a bright October Tuesday morning is the time to go."

(Published June 27, 1999)