An Olympic task: Identifying our home mountains

On a sunny afternoon in early May, I was at the Olympic Gateway Center up the hill from downtown Shelton. From the parking lot, you could see an immense, snow-covered, hulking presence to the north.

I entered The Shopper and asked a woman inside if she'd mind coming outside to look at something. We walked out to the parking lot and I pointed to that mountain.

"You know the name of that mountain?" I asked her.

"I'm not sure," she said. "Mount Rainier?"

"No," because I knew that for sure. I turned and pointed east. "Mount Rainier is that direction."

"Is that the Cascades or the Olympics?" she as...