Fall City Man Puts Glacial Taste In A Plastic Bottle

For years, Jon Corriveau recalls, it sat right there in front of him.

Ice. Seven hundred feet thick, six miles long, 15,000 years old. The Carbon Glacier.

Corriveau grew up on it. A Seattle native and avid mountaineer, he cut his climbing teeth on Rainier, the mountain Puget Sound natives called Tahoma. He has stood on its summit 26 times.

His thirst for high adventure would take him whitewater kayaking, backcountry skiing, ice climbing. It is far from quenched. Recently, a fierce wind blew him and his paraglider straight into the side of Mount Si. Crushed bone around his left eye has been replaced by a steel plate. It's almost healed enough, he says, to go flying again - this time with a better helmet.

But for Corriveau, the best of times have always been on Rainier. Like many others who hold high altitudes close to their hearts, Corriveau cannot count the times he has stood on Tahoma's shoulders, watched the sun disappear into Puget Sound, felt the world's sweetest air brush his cheek and thought silently: If a guy could just bottle this . . .

Last year, he did.

Corriveau put a taste of Rainier in a plastic bottle. The Fall City resident quit his longtime job with Foss Maritime and formed Glacier Water Co., whose one and only product is Tahoma, "Pure glacier water from Mount Rainier."

Tough competition

It's created by the Carbon Glacier, which stretches north from Willis Wall near the mountain's 14,410-foot summit. Meltwater from that glacier forms the Carbon River. Corriveau taps into it near the national park border.

The water is pumped, 6,000 gallons at a time, straight from the river, then trucked to a plant in Sedro-Woolley, where it is bottled after a filtration process to remove chalky glacial flour.

Today it sits on shelves in local grocery stores next to at least a dozen other labels vying for attention in a hotly contested business.

On more than one occasion, acquaintances up to and including his wife have told him he's completely nuts. But Corriveau, 33, saw glacier water as a rare opportunity to mix business with pleasure. He persisted.

It took more than a year of permit wrangling with the National Park Service, the state Department of Ecology and other agencies to make Tahoma water a reality. Corriveau eventually got an exclusive water right to the Carbon River. His water - which is filtered to remove any contaminants and all particles as small as .2 microns - got the blessing of health officials.

Tahoma hit the market just over a year ago as the first bottled glacier water in the U.S. In spite of early sales contracts with Northwest commercial stalwarts such as QFC and Nordstrom, early business was painfully slow. Tahoma, which Corriveau says costs more to filter, is higher priced (about $1.50 for a 1.5 liter bottle) than local competitors.

But Corriveau was convinced he had something no one else could match.

"I've got the best source," he says flatly.

15,000-year-old water

Corriveau will take you down the aisle of a local store, pull bottles off the shelf, and point to the fine print. Most will use words like "pure" and "mountains." But few, if any, actually list their specific source. Tahoma's label prints it with pride: "Source: Carbon Glacier."

"I'm a purist," he says, adding that Rainier's north face provides one of the cleanest, most undisturbed water sources on the planet. No development lies above the source.

"Glacier water has never been in the ground table," Corriveau adds. "And it comes from ice that's literally 15,000 years old. It has that mystical quality."

More and more Puget Sound residents have tapped in. Sales have quadrupled in one year. The company is finally breaking even. Oddly, however, the hottest market for Rainier water is nowhere within sight of the mountain.

It's Taiwan. In December, an initial shipment of 20 shipping containers filled with Tahoma water left the Port of Seattle for the Far East. Many more have followed. Corriveau now exports 90 percent of his bottled water to the Far East.

"The Taiwan business has made us an actual player" in the local water market, Corriveau says.

He believes he and two partners who invested most of their savings can finally turn the corner if the local market matches overseas business.

Of course, things could fall apart overnight if Mother Nature has a mood swing. Rainier is a volcano, Corriveau reminds you with a laugh.

"If it blows, we're out of business tomorrow," he says. "We've even thought of marketing it that way. Tahoma: Get it while you can."