Bloomers on the Volcano: Fay Fuller's 1890 Mount Rainier Triumph

A Vision from the Schoolhouse

In the late 1880s, the Victorian convention regarding women in the outdoors was rigid and unyielding: high mountain peaks were considered domains reserved exclusively for male constitution, stamina, and daring. Women who ventured onto mountain trails were expected to maintain decorum and modesty, while technical climbing on heavily glaciated stratovolcanoes was deemed completely out of reach.

Twenty-year-old Fay Fuller, teaching school in Yelm, Washington, rejected those limits entirely. Gazing out her schoolhouse window every morning across the prairies toward the massive white ramparts of Mount Rainier (4,392 m), Fuller harbored a quiet, burning determination. Writing articles for her father’s newspaper, the Tacoma Ledger, she observed early male climbing expeditions and resolved that she would become the first woman in history to stand on the mountain’s snowy crown.

Her opportunity arrived in August 1890, when veteran mountaineer Philemon Beecher Van Trump, co-conqueror of the mountain in 1870, announced an expedition with Reverend E. C. Smith and seasoned local climbers. Fuller applied to join. Impressed by her earnestness and physical resilience, Van Trump warmly accepted her into the team.

The Alpine Wardrobe of 1890

Facing a glaciated volcano in the nineteenth century without modern alpine gear required extraordinary resourcefulness. Fuller designed her own climbing outfit: heavy flannel bloomers beneath a blue woolen dress that reached past her knees, thick woolen stockings, and heavy boy’s leather boots fitted with sharp iron calks to grip the glacial ice.

To protect her eyes and skin from the blinding glare of the upper snowfields, Fuller wore dark goggles and covered her face with charcoal paste. Carrying an eight-foot wooden alpenstock, she shouldered her pack alongside her male companions and departed the Longmire homestead on August 7, 1890.

The party climbed past Paradise to a high alpine perch at 10,000 feet, which had recently been named Camp Muir in honor of naturalist John Muir’s 1888 ascent. Camping under the stars on the edge of the Cowlitz Glacier, Fuller slept soundly while the icy winds rattled the tent canvas.

Through Gibraltar to the Crater Rim

On the morning of August 10, 1890, Fuller and the team roped up for the summit assault. Crossing the shattered, crevassed ice of the Cowlitz and Ingraham glaciers, they arrived at the terrifying volcanic narrows of Gibraltar Rock.

The route around Gibraltar was notorious for releasing barrages of rockfall whenever the morning sun loosened frozen scree. Traversing a narrow, slippery rock shelf suspended over an abyss of blue ice, Fuller moved with steady calm, declining physical assistance from the men on the rope and planting her alpenstock with absolute precision.

Above Gibraltar, the route presented steep, glazed ice slopes leading to the summit caldera. Breathing thin, freezing air at over 14,000 feet, Fuller pressed upward step by step. At four o’clock in the afternoon on August 10, 1890, Fay Fuller stepped onto the highest point of Columbia Crest, becoming the first woman in history to conquer Mount Rainier.

Night in the Volcanic Caves

As the crimson sun set over the Pacific Ocean, sub-zero gale-force winds began buffeting the summit. Knowing that descending the rotten cliffs of Gibraltar in darkness meant certain death, Van Trump guided Fuller into the steaming volcanic ice caves inside the caldera rim.

Crouched inside the hollow ice chambers warmed by sulfurous fumaroles, Fuller spent the night awake, sharing bread and melted snow with her companions while ice water dripped onto their coats. At dawn on August 11, the party descended safely to Paradise, welcomed by cheering onlookers who had tracked their progress through telescopes in Tacoma.

Fuller’s climb opened the floodgates for female alpinism in North America. Four years later, in 1894, she joined an elite gathering on the summit of Mount Hood to co-found the Mazamas, one of the continent’s most venerable mountaineering institutions, cementing her place as an immortal pioneer of mountain exploration.