A photo of Mount Rainier.

View of Mount Rainier along Route 163 that leads to the Carbon River Entrance to Mount Rainier National Park. This view is about 10 miles north of the park boundary. From the perspective of the coastal lowlands of Puget Sound in Washington, Mount Rainier dominates the regional landscape, standing nearly 3 miles high (14,410 feet or 4,392 meters). The massive stratovolcano extends over 100 square miles with lava flows extending from the volcano as much as nine miles (Crandell, 1971). Mount Rainier is the highest volcano in the Cascade Range and is the third largest in volume after Mount Shasta in California and Mount Adams in Oregon (Swanson and others, 1989).