Chalmer Sinkey, news photographer for Fox Movietone News’ Seattle bureau writes about ascending Mt. Rainier with a group of mountaineers for a story about the Nisqually Glacier back in 1935. Below is an excerpt of his story about climbing and shooting on what Puget Sounders call simply, “the Mountain.”

Sinkey of course wasn’t exactly in the shape to be attempting to climb a 14,411 foot tall ice-covered stratovolcano that potential climbers of Mt Everest train on due to the weather, but he packed up his Akeley and went anyway…

Twenty-five pounds on a cameraman’s back is twenty-five pounds on any good old level stretch, but twenty-five pounds going up Mt. Rainier when the altitude starts getting rare is beyond calculation. The mountaineers spurted along as though muscles didn’t exist. A cameraman hates to admit to a mountaineer that he can’t take it, so we keep right on spurting along. The nine people plodded in silence, saving good breath to help carry their loads. nothing but the rhythmic clink of alpenstocks and the clump of feet as we stepped along indian-file behind the hardy Swede. The fog grows denser and forms globules of water on our eyelashes. Perspiration drips down from our soaking brows. Underfoot the trail is muddy as we turn down the edge of the moraine that leads onto the ice fields.

Who told Fox Movietone News about this glacier, anyway?

Five years earlier, the photographer who held Sinkey’s position in Seattle also climbed Mt. Rainier to film the Nisqually Glacier. Though unlike Sinkey, Eric Mayell and Jim Foreman packed a complete sound outfit up that mountain instead of a relatively light hand-cranked silent camera.