[3] The glacier was named after the geologist Samuel Franklin Emmons after his involvement in a survey of Mount Rainier in 1870.

Near the Disappointment Cleaver at 12,200 ft (3,700 m), the Emmons is joined by the Ingraham Glacier flowing to the south.

As the Emmons flows northeast, the massive glacier descends until it reaches its rocky lower terminus at about 5,100 ft (1,600 m) in elevation.

That advance was continuing by 1992, but at a slower rate; ice beneath the rock debris was melting irregularly and forming a vast hummocky area.

"In the past few decades the glaciers [in the American West] have been receding, continuing a trend from the Little Ice Age.