The Northwest offers a field for mountain climbing as a recreation that will some day attract as many Americans as do the mountains of Switzerland to-day. One might take an annual mountaineering trip for a score of years and have each time a widely different goal. Each precipitous height offers a different, and in its own way a more glorious view. Scale Mt. Constance in the Olympic Mountains, standing opposite Mt. Rainier, and midway between the Selkirks and Mt. Hood, and the curvature of the earth is apparent as if it, rather than the sky, as Omar sings, were an inverted bowl.
From this Olympic point of vantage, Rainier serves as a guide line in the perpendicular to the eye, while the mountains to the north and to the south lean noticeably away from this center.
