By Michael Carman
Peninsula Daily News
ASHFORD — Nearly a century’s worth of snowfall have erased the tracks made by Effie Burnard, one of the first women to summit Mount Rainier, first in 1919 with her father and again in 1920 with her soon-to-be husband.
But her great-granddaughter, Madeline (Nolan) Read, a 2009 Port Angeles High School graduate, recently completed an epic ascent in Burnard’s figurative footsteps.
Read reached the top of our state’s highest peak Sunday, July 23, accompanied by her father Mike Nolan, a retired counselor in the Port Angeles School District, friend Kendra Scout, husband Andy Read and Andy’s cousin Beau Palin.
Burnard died when Madeline was young, so she didn’t have a chance to discuss her great-grandmother’s climbs directly with the family matriarch.
But Burnard passed along some treasured family heirlooms that provided a window into the past.
“She left some journals that were very detailed about the climb,” Madeline Read said.
“It’s something that everybody in my family has talked about with pride. But no other woman in my family had ever gone and climbed the mountain since, so I wanted to have that connection.
Nolan recalled discussing his grandmother’s climbing feats before she passed.
“She talked about the climb and what a huge impact it was on her life. She kept a few journals of the climb filled with details and these adorable drawings. It was a point of pride for her.”
Read now lives in Bellevue and Mount Rainier looms large to the south.
With the peak offering a tempting vista and knowing the 100th anniversary of Burnard’s ascent was coming up, Read convinced her dad to make a second climb of Rainier.
Nolan had previously summited Mount Rainier earlier this decade.
“Madeline talked me into doing it again,” Nolan said. “She’s a sentimental person and the symmetry of it all is hard to deny.
“When [Burnard] went up in 1919 it was with her dad, and in 1920 it was with her husband, so this is really special for Madeline almost 100 years later.”
Nolan said they trained for the ascent by climbing other Cascade peaks like Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams.
“The only way to train for mountain hikes is to climb a mountain,” Read joked.
Before climbers begin the high-altitude portion of the ascent, they must first reach base camp at Camp Muir (10,188 feet).
“Saturday when we headed up to Muir you could see Adams, and St. Helens and off in the distance you could see Mount Hood and barely make out Mount Jefferson,” Nolan said.
“We had all these beautiful mountains for company.”
Much of the group’s climb was accomplished in darkness after leaving base camp at 12:30 a.m.
Nolan said spirits lifted with the sun’s rise.
“You can see more than the little bead of light from your head lamp, you warm up a bit and everybody was feeling rejuvenated,” Nolan said.
But that energy flagged as the climb continued ever higher up the south side of the mountain Liberty Cap route.
“For me the toughest parts were the last hour until the summit, just because you are tired and you have to keep going and its really steep,” Read said.
Read kept her great-grandmother’s courage in mind as she kept climbing.
“One of the things I thought about was Effie always said she was the second woman ever to summit Rainier, but the first woman to do it wearing pants,” Read said. “To break down the societal norms of the time like that, I can’t imagine doing it. I think climbing Rainier was her great personal accomplishment.”
Eventually the group reached Columbia Crest, the snowy summit on the mountain’s caldera at 14,411 feet around 8 a.m.
After resting up, enjoying a clear view of the horizon and taking pictures for about 90 minutes, it was time to head back down.
“You do the victory dance, take the pictures, but you don’t stay at the top for very long,” Nolan said.
When the group made it safely back to the Lodge at Paradise, Nolan had a gift for his daughter.
“I gave those journals to Madeline and I said, ‘Those are yours now,’” he said.
Read said she would have broken into tears, if she could have.
“It was a very emotional moment,” she said. “I would have cried but I was so dehydrated from the climb. But I was choked up and it was hard to talk. It was very special.”
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-417-3525 or mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
