Mount Rainier Climbing Rangers

The Mount Rainier Climbing Ranger staff is comprised of sixteen rangers.  Most of our staff is seasonal and starts training each year in early-April.  Climbing patrols, snow studies/avalanche response, emergency medical services, aviation support, and technical rope rescue are the five major duties for the staff.  Climbing rangers primary task is search and rescue, but have many other responsibilities within the park.  Resource protection and monitoring, staffing visitor centers and ranger stations, monitoring guide service operations, glacier studies, and human waste management and removal are all part of the job.

Funding for the Climbing Program comes from two major sources: Mount Rainier Climbing Pass sales and Concession Fees.  Staffing levels are directly related to the number of climbers we receive each year.

As National Park Service Rangers our duty is to uphold the mission of the National Park Service in accordance with the Organic Act of 1916:
"to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
And the Wilderness Act of 1964:
Wilderness "shall be administered for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness, and so as to provide for the protection of these areas, the preservation of their wilderness character, and for the gathering and dissemination of information regarding their use and enjoyment as wilderness... A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."
The main climbing season occurs between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  Climbing rangers staff Camp Muir, Camp Schurman, and the Climbing Information Center in Paradise during this season.  The staff is paired down to a skeleton crew during the winter months for administration work and preparations for the next season.