The Rainier Watch Community
If you are here, you know how glorious those days are when The Mountain is out.
Rainier Watch is a community effort focused around a shared love of Mount Rainier. It is a community of Mount Rainier lovers and watchers who shout with glee and pure joy when The Mountain is out. There is nothing better than those days.
My name is David, the founder of Rainier Watch and this is the RW story:
Inception
Here’s the very first tweet that started it all. (In hindsight, perhaps it could have been slightly more explanatory or informative).
A sunny day morphed to drizzle.. Alas these clouds are keeping Rainier cautiously hidden.
— Rainier Watch ❤🗻 (@MtRainierWatch) March 17, 2013
2013
I started Rainier Watch after moving back to Seattle after a long hiatus. I was immediately struck by those days when The Mountain was out. I thought, surely there must be some sort of way for people to know when Mount Rainier is visible. I figured others would also have this same question so my (first Twitter account ever) account called Rainier Watch to post whenever The Mountain was out, as seen from my commuter bus traveling up and down Aurora/99. This was the birth of Rainier Watch side project and little did I know how fun, and engaging it would be.
After several years of occasionally posting, fast forward to 2016:
2016
While I was posting every once in awhile on Twitter and honestly not getting as much traction as I’d like, I decided to refine the brand and it’s image a bit. So late in 2016 I teamed up with a designer to help bring my design ideas and concepts to digital life. I had a few design ideas and took to the internet for feedback where I found Ewnetu, a talented designer, who loved the Rainier Watch mission. He created the logo you see today and has been a sounding board for a lot of the design decisions through the creative process.
2017
In 2017, things started to get a bit more real. Because social media is taking over the world, we joined Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr. My wife can claim full responsibility for the idea to join Instagram and its been a huge hit for Rainier Watch – which makes total sense with how many talented photographers there are on that picture-based platform. And continuing the spirit of internet sharing, the official Rainier Watch website also launched in the middle of the year. Then in late 2017 the Rainier Watch shop launched with stickers, to help cover some of the infrastructure costs of a website and operations.
2018
The Rainier Watch community started to expand rapidly and gain more legitimacy. The Rainier Watch shop moved from a DIY, minimal cost approach via Gumroad to Big Cartel and now WordPress/Woocommerce. The shop has grown from selling stickers once in a blue moon to now Mountain branded apparel! We launched lots of Rainier inspired shirts and stickers and collaborated with fun brands doing lots of great giveaways. Also work began on the RW API, which will allow us to build an app and website to check if The Mountain is out based on everyone’s contributions.
2019
We did our first pop up shop half way through the year of 2019 at the Fremont Sunday Market which was a ton of fun. Hope we can do more in person shops soon. Also we changed our donation structure, increasing it from 10% of profits to 5% of all sales! This means more protecting Mount Rainier and more donations to awesome organizations like Washington’s National Park Fund.
Thank You!
The Rainier Watch community is a fantastic group of people stoked on The Mountain. I love Mount Rainier and I love sharing this love with you all. We have countless, epic plans in motion behind the scenes and I can’t wait to share more with you all. Thanks to each and every one of you. Rainier Watch wouldn’t be anything with it’s loyal community of Rainier watchers and lovers. You are all awesome; now get off your computer/phone/tablet and go get some epic Rainier watching in.
