Puyallup Glacier, Alpine glacier on Mount Rainier, Washington, United States.
Puyallup Glacier begins as a branch of the ice stream leaving Mount Rainier's Sunset Amphitheater, splitting off at about 8,500 feet. It then spreads into a broad ice sheet between 8,400 and 7,400 feet, covers 2.0 square miles with 10.2 billion cubic feet of ice, and narrows as it turns northwest before ending dirty on steep terrain near 6,000 feet.
The sources give no founding date or early history for the Puyallup Glacier. They record that in 1983 it covered 5.2 square kilometres and held about 289 million cubic metres of ice, and that it shares its ice source with the South Mowich Glacier, branching from the stream leaving the Sunset Amphitheater at roughly 2,600 metres.
The glacier's name comes from the Puyallup people, whose reservation lies downstream near Tacoma; the river it feeds carries the same name. The ice also feeds the Puyallup River, tying the mountain directly to the tribe's homeland.
The glacier lies on the west flank of Mount Rainier, its terminus at about 6,000 ft (1,800 m) on steep, uneven ground below the broad ice sheet at 7,400–8,400 ft. It is fed from the Sunset Amphitheater ice stream and is the source of the Puyallup River. Approach from the west side of the mountain; the ice is dirt-covered and crevassed near its end, so view it from a distance rather than walking onto it.
The Puyallup Glacier shares its ice source with the northern South Mowich Glacier, splitting from the same stream leaving the Sunset Amphitheater at about 8,500 feet. Below this fork the ice spreads into a broad sheet between roughly 8,400 and 7,400 feet before narrowing into a small valley. Its meltwater becomes the Puyallup River.
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