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The F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies had spent the previous 24 hours in an intense search for the man, Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, using snowshoes and aircraft to scour the steep and snowy terrain of this rugged 368-square-mile park.
Mr. Barnes’s body was spotted in the creek by aircraft about 10:45 a.m. Monday, said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. He was found wearing a T-shirt, jeans and one sneaker. On his neck was tattooed, “Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust.” Mr. Troyer said officers had found two guns they believed had belonged to Mr. Barnes, but that he did not use them on himself.
“He appears to have not been a victim of any kind of violence other than the weather,” Mr. Troyer said. Temperatures were in the low 30s overnight. About two feet of snow had fallen recently.
Chuck Young, the park’s chief ranger, said Mr. Barnes was found about a mile or a mile and a half from Barn Flat, a bend in a park road where officials say he shot and killed the ranger, Margaret Anderson, 34, after she tried to stop his vehicle.
Mr. Barnes had failed to stop when park rangers tried to pull him over Sunday morning. Ms. Anderson, responding to radio calls, used her patrol vehicle to create a blockade as Mr. Barnes made his way toward the busy Paradise visitor center and recreational area, where fresh snow had lured people to go sledding and snowshoeing. The gunman is believed to have stepped out of his vehicle and shot Ms. Anderson before she could react.
“There’s nothing she could have done,” Mr. Troyer said.
Ms. Anderson had two daughters, ages 3 and 1, and was married to another ranger at the park. She joined the Park Service as a seasonal ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah in 2000. The couple had worked at Mount Rainier since 2008.
No one else was injured, though Mr. Barnes is believed to have shot out the windshield of another ranger who responded.
“They made a conscious decision to make this stop below Paradise, where we were on one of the busiest winter-day weekends of the year,” said Randy King, the park superintendent.
A tactical team had followed Mr. Barnes’s tracks to canyons where he was believed to be hiding. An airplane and helicopter also worked to pinpoint him.
Ayn Dietrich, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Seattle, said law enforcement officials believed Mr. Barnes was also involved in a shooting at a house party earlier Sunday in the town of Skyway, Wash., in which four people were injured, two critically.
Mr. Barnes had served in the Army and been stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, but did not appear to have been a combat veteran, according to Steven Dean, the assistant special agent in charge of the Seattle office of the F.B.I.
Park officials and law enforcement agencies had said they found ammunition, body armor and survivalist gear in Mr. Barnes’s vehicle, raising concerns that he might elude the authorities and hurt others in the park. But Mr. Dean said Mr. Barnes “was not a Special Forces-trained solider” and “was found dead on a hill, unequipped.”
Mr. Young said that law enforcement officers escorted more than 80 people from the visitor center overnight Monday in a convoy, determining that to do so was safer than having them remain in the park.
“The alternative is they are sitting in a building surrounded by a parking lot,” Mr. Young said.
Although most of the park had been cleared of visitors, three groups remained in the backcountry. Rangers hiked out to bring them in.
The last time rangers died at Mount Rainier was in 1995, when two climbing rangers died during a rescue. Ms. Anderson is the ninth National Park Service ranger killed in the line of duty since the parks were founded in 1916. A park ranger was last killed in 2002, at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, in pursuit of a drug cartel hit squad.
Ms. Anderson was among the 1,000 law enforcement rangers at parks across the country. Law enforcement rangers have patrolled the national parks since 1916. The rangers are trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia to carry a handgun.
The park is about 85 miles southeast of Seattle, and almost entirely made up of federally designated wilderness.
Mr. King, the superintendent, said the park would most likely remain closed on Tuesday while the investigation continued.
“National parks are places we should continue to go and feel safe,” said Mr. Dean of the F.B.I. “This is an anomaly. This is something that doesn’t happen.”
William Yardley reported from Mount Rainier National Park, and Isolde Raftery from Seattle.
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