Mount Carrie is a mountain summit located within

Olympic National Park Olympic National Park is a United States national park located in the State of Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula. The park has four regions: the Pacific coastline, alpine areas, the west-side temperate rainforest, and the forests of the drier ...

in Clallam 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 o ...

state. Mt. Carrie is the highest point in the

Bailey Range The Bailey Range is a mountain range located within Olympic National Park in Washington state. Description The Bailey Range is a subrange of the Olympic Mountains. These remote mountains are situated within the Daniel J. Evans Wilderness, but ...

which is a subrange of the

Olympic Mountains The Olympic Mountains are a mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula of the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are not especially high – Mount Olympus is the highest at ; however, the easte ...

. With a good eye and clear weather, the mountain can be seen from the visitor center at Hurricane Ridge. Its nearest higher peak is Mount Mathias (7,156 ft) which is an outlier of

Mount Olympus Mount Olympus (; el, Όλυμπος, Ólympos, also , ) is the highest mountain in Greece. It is part of the Olympus massif near the Thermaic Gulf of the Aegean Sea, located in the Olympus Range on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, be ...

, to the south. Due to heavy winter snowfalls, Mount Carrie supports the

Carrie Glacier Carrie Glacier is located on Mount Carrie and Mount Fairchild in the Olympic Mountains of Olympic National Park. Starting at an elevation of about , the glacier descends northward, but the ice soon reaches a cliff. Part of the Carrie Glacier plu ...

in its northeast cirque, and

Fairchild Glacier Fairchild Glacier is located in the U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defin ...

on the east slope. Precipitation

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 marke ...

from the mountain drains into tributaries of the

Elwha River The Elwha River is a river on the Olympic Peninsula in the U.S. state of Washington. From its source at Elwha snowfinger in the Olympic Mountains, it flows generally north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Most of the river's course is within the O ...

and

Hoh River The Hoh River is a river of the Pacific Northwest, located on the Olympic Peninsula in the U.S. state of Washington. About long, the Hoh River originates at the Hoh Glacier on Mount Olympus and flows west through the Olympic Mountains of Olympi ...

. There is a

scrambling Scrambling is a mountaineering term for ascending steep terrain using one's hands to assist in holds and balance.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. It is also used to describe terrain that falls between hiking and rock climbing (as a “scrambl ...

route via the High Divide Trail and Cat Walk.

History

The

Olympic Peninsula The Olympic Peninsula is a large arm of land in western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and th ...

was largely unmapped until surveyors Arthur Dodwell and Theodore Rixon mapped most of its topography between 1898 and 1900, and what is now Mt. Carrie, was in 1899 one of the last remaining unnamed mountains in the Olympic range. The mountain was named by Theodore Rixon for his wife Caroline "Carrie" (Jones) Rixon. Carrie Rixon was a noted artist, painter, singer, and taught music to children. The Rixons lived at a 160-acre homestead she called Fairholme at the west end of

Lake Crescent Lake Crescent is a deep lake located entirely within Olympic National Park in Clallam County, Washington, United States, approximately west of Port Angeles on U.S. Route 101 and nearby to the small community of Piedmont. At an official ma ...

, until they moved to Teahwhit Head in 1916. Carrie died on May 20, 1946.

Climate

Based on the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...

, Mount Carrie is located in the

marine west coast An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate, is the humid temperate climate sub-type in Köppen classification ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, generally featuring cool summers and mild winters ...

climate zone of western North America. Most

weather front A weather front is a boundary separating air masses for which several characteristics differ, such as air density, wind, temperature, and humidity. Disturbed and unstable weather due to these differences often arises along the boundary. For in ...

s 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 contin ...

, and travel northeast toward the

. As fronts approach, they are forced upward by the peaks of the Olympic Range, causing them to drop their moisture in the form of rain or snowfall (

Orographic lift Orographic lift occurs when an air mass is forced from a low elevation to a higher elevation as it moves over rising terrain. As the air mass gains altitude it quickly cools down adiabatically, which can raise the relative humidity to 100% and cr ...

). As a result, the Olympics experience high precipitation, especially during the winter months. 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. In terms of favorable weather, the best months for viewing and climbing are July through September.

References

External links

* * Mount Carrie weather
Mountain Forecast
* Carrie Rixon photo
University of Washington digital library
* Mount Carrie aerial photo
PBase
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carrie Olympic Mountains Mountains of Washington (state) Landforms of Olympic National Park North American 2000 m summits

History

Climate

See also

References

External links