Bismarck Peak is a 7,585-foot-elevation (2,312 meter) mountain summit centrally located in the

William O. Douglas Wilderness The William O. Douglas Wilderness is a Wilderness Act, designated wilderness in Central Washington. It includes located between the U.S. Route 12 (Washington), U.S. Route 12 and State Route 410 (Washington), State Route 410 and is jointly admini ...

on land administered by the Wenatchee National Forest. It is also 24 miles east-southeast of

Mount Rainier Mount Rainier (), indigenously known as Tahoma, Tacoma, Tacobet, or təqʷubəʔ, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, located in Mount Rainier National Park about south-southeast of Seattle. With a s ...

in Yakima County of

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

state. Bismarck Peak is situated east of the crest of the

Cascade Range The Cascade Range or Cascades is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern California. It includes both non-volcanic mountains, such as the North Cascades, ...

, southeast of

Bumping Lake Bumping Lake is a lake and reservoir along the course of the Bumping River, in Yakima County, Washington state, USA. Bumping Lake has also named as "Lake Plehnam" by Preston's Map of Oregon and Washington in the 1850s, and "Tannum Lake" by the Un ...

, south of

Mount Aix Mount Aix is a mountain summit centrally located in the William O. Douglas Wilderness on land administered by the Wenatchee National Forest, and is the highest point in that wilderness area. It is also 24 miles east-southeast of Mount Rainier i ...

, and northwest of

Rimrock Lake Rimrock Lake is a lake along the course of the Tieton River, in Yakima County, Washington state, US. The lake is used as a storage reservoir for the Yakima Project, an irrigation project run by the United States Bureau of Reclamation. An impoundm ...

. Its nearest higher peak is Mount Aix, to the north-northeast. Aix and Bismarck are the two highest peaks midway between

Mount Rainier National Park Mount Rainier National Park is an American national park located in southeast Pierce County and northeast Lewis County in Washington state. The park was established on March 2, 1899, as the fourth national park in the United States, preservi ...

and

Yakima, Washington Yakima ( or ) is a city in and the county seat of Yakima County, Washington, and the state's 11th-largest city by population. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 96,968 and a metropolitan population of 256,728. The uninco ...

so they are quite prominent.

Precipitation In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravitational pull from clouds. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. ...

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock market ...

from Bismarck Peak drains into tributaries of the

Yakima River The Yakima River is a tributary of the Columbia River in south central and eastern Washington state, named for the indigenous Yakama people. Lewis and Clark mention in their journals that the Chin-nâm pam (or the Lower Snake River Chamnapam Nat ...

, thence into the

Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...

Climate

Bismarck Peak is located east of the Cascade crest. Most weather fronts originate in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, and travel northeast toward the Cascade Mountains. As fronts approach, they are forced upward by the peaks of the Cascade Range ( Orographic lift), causing them to drop their moisture in the form of rain or snowfall onto the Cascades. As a result, the east side of the Cascades experiences less precipitation than the west side of the crest. During winter months, weather is usually cloudy, but, due to high pressure systems over the Pacific Ocean that intensify during summer months, there is often little or no cloud cover during the summer.Beckey, Fred W. Cascade Alpine Guide, Climbing and High Routes. Seattle, WA: Mountaineers Books, 2008.

References

External links

{{stack, {{Portal, Mountains * National Forest Service web site
William O Douglas Wilderness
Cascade Range Mountains of Washington (state) Mountains of Yakima County, Washington North American 2000 m summits