The Mount Rainier ridge from which six climbers fell thousands of feet last week—they're now presumed dead—is a place known for extremes, renowned for beauty and dangers.

It's called Liberty Ridge: a steep ramp of rock, snow and ice splitting a northern face of the 14,410-foot mountain in Washington State. Its stunning views and technical difficulty—hard but not too hard—have earned it a place in the book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America.

But its remoteness, steepness, and exposure to the elements have also made Liberty Ridge the scene of epic rescues and more than its share of deaths.

The ridge sees a tiny fraction of the traffic on popular climbing routes up the mountain's southern flanks, but it has been the