Mount Rainier NP, WA

2022 Parks Road Trip Diary: Days 45-50

Mount Rainier National Park, with more glaciers than Glacier National Park, is a snowy place known for its alpine wildflower meadows, great views of the cascade range, and ice climbing backpackers hoping to summit its 14,417 ft peak. We’re just mere day hikers, but that didn’t stop us from playing in the snow a bit. 10,000 ft can be fun too! ⛄️

This is a long one. Rainier had so much to offer!

Day 45: A Comet Falls

We couldn’t tell in the dark when we arrived at almost midnight last night, but our US forest service campground just outside the park was nice and woodsy, the big trees making us feel small and secluded. However, the first priority today was to move out of here and into a park-run first-come-first-serve campground, Cougar Rock, so we could be closer to Rainier’s main trailheads. Getting a spot at Cougar Rock was no problem on a Thursday morning.

At Cougar Rock, we were in the southern part of the park, less than an hour’s drive from the popular area known as Paradise. Paradise has the trailhead to several great trails. We’d read that getting a parking spot at Paradise would require showing up early, but we had already used the early hours of the day to move camp. So, rather than taking the risk of potentially driving there and having to turn around, we decided to spend today on a hike closer to camp: Mildred Point via Comet Falls (7.8 mi, 2700 ft elev gain).

Though not a Paradise hike, it was well worth it!

the view behind as you reach the top of the falls

Comet Falls is the typical endpoint for hikers of this trail, but if you want a full (and more difficult) hiking day you can continue on to Mildred Point which has a nice view that makes the extra distance worth going.

The last part of this hike is a steep path through a meadow, which was kind of unusual and cool. When we reached the end, we were the only ones there. Ah, solitude. 🧘

at the endpoint overlooking a steep valley

What made this hike great overall was having such a varied set of features: waterfalls, views, meadows, plant life… and plenty of other little fun spots.

insert your own caption here, i dare not try

This night we also attended our first ranger program. We heard some noise near our campsite that sounded like someone speaking through a microphone, and upon checking it out realized it was a presentation by a ranger. There are a few types of ranger programs that National Parks hold, but the nighttime fireside chat (which is what this was) became our favorite. It was a lot like attending a college lecture; the ranger gave a semi-interactive presentation on the history of the park.

I especially liked when he explained a bunch of the park’s current challenges, and then posed questions like “how would you make these tradeoffs between human tourism access and park preservation?” He linked it to the challenge of climate change overall, since it’s the same problem: how can humans enjoy this place without ruining it? What are we doing currently that isn’t sustainable, and how do we address that?

Some good food for thought for tomorrows’s hike, I suppose.

Day 46: Halfway up to Rainier’s Summit

Today we woke up early enough to get a parking spot at Paradise. You can see most of the views that Paradise has to offer in one big loop, the Skyline Loop (6.2 mi, 1800 ft), and that was our plan.

Skyline Loop

The trail starts at the visitor center in Paradise, which itself sits at the base of Mount Rainier, around 5200 ft above sea level. The loop hits various features, and halfway through there’s a high point with a great view of Mount Adams.

fancy visitor center architecture at Paradise

a bridge straight out of alice in wonderland

We came upon the high point of this hike well before we were done with the ascent: two marmots who were duking it out over some presumably very important marmot matters.

"no, you misheard, I said you were hoary†"

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoary_marmot

For all seventeen climactic seconds of this historic match, see here.

Finally we reached the literal high point, Panorama point.

panorama point, mount adams in the distance

me regretting my prior purchase of zinc sunscreen

Camp Muir

In researching the trails in this area I also discovered an extension of the Skyline Loop which climbs up to Camp Muir: Camp Muir via Skyline Loop Trail (10.2 mi, 4800 ft elev gain). Camp Muir is a base camp sitting at 10000 ft that hikers who are attempting to summit Mount Rainier will use to break up the trip into a few days. Mount Rainier’s peak is above 14000 ft and requires some ice climbing skills, so even for capable people it’s probably too difficult to summit in a single day.

For me, Camp Muir would be an additional four total miles (two each way) and an extra 3000 ft elevation gain off of Skyline Loop. And while the route was purely snow, it wouldn’t require any ice climbing. Judy heard “snow” and “3000 ft over 2 miles” and noped out, i.e., continued back to the visitor center where she and I would meet up later. I pressed on to Camp Muir on my own.

This was a serious challenge for me. Imagine you’re skiing, and there’s a steep slope you want to ski down, but the lift isn’t working, so you decide to walk up. That’s basically what this felt like.

one foot in front of the other is the only way through this

I think I’ve done enough ascents of this steepness now to say that the challenge is far more mental than physical. Nearly everyone else hiking this trail was a Rainier summiter, with ice axe and a heavy backpack, pace slowed by the extra weight. As a day hiker carrying much less I found a lot of motivation in being able to fly past them unburdened. 🏃‍♂️

I was welcomed to Camp Muir by a mix of dust and ice flying into my face from a landing helicopter. Hell yeah.

"you took too long so I got worried and called for your rescue" - Judy, in my head when I saw the helicopter

statistic: only 1 out of 4 of these people will successfully summit

The way back down was perhaps what really made it worth reaching the top. I said it was like walking up a ski slope; how would you go down a ski slope if you didn’t have skis? Well, walking down would just be boring.

For the less steep parts, you can try to ski on your shoes. It kind of works! It’s a lot of effort though. For the steeper parts, you can just slide down on your butt. Chances are good you’ll find a chute from someone having done it before you!

did not expect this to be my experience in nature during the peak of summer

It took me a little less than two hours to reach Camp Muir from Panorama Point, and only forty-five minutes to come back down, thanks to all the sliding (aka “glissading”). So fun.

I found Judy at the visitor center waiting for me, reading a book. We stopped by the visitor center’s store to restock ice for our cooler and I made a joke about it being fresh from the glacier; the cashier seemed unamused. Back at camp, we made dinner and attended another ranger program, this time about Rainier’s glaciers. A good day. 🙂

Day 47: Burroughs Mountain

Waiting for the Sun to Rise

With the two days we had left for Rainier, we wanted to visit the northeast part of the park known as Sunrise, another popular hiking area. We were hoping to base ourselves in the nearby White River campground.

The drive to White River from Cougar Rock was about an hour. This was on a Saturday morning, in a popular part of the park, not all that far from Seattle, and we were trying to get a spot at a first-come-first-serve campground again by arriving around 10am. Not a recipe for success.

And indeed when we arrived at the entrance station near Sunrise, we were greeted with a seemingly endless line of cars ahead of us and an estimate from a ranger that we’d be waiting at least an hour before we could get to the entrance. Several people were giving up and turning around; one guy was angrily (and obnoxiously) yelling out of his car “they’re gonna make you turn around!” as he drove by on his way back out, referring to the fact that day hikers who were hoping for a parking spot at Sunrise would be turned away. We held on to hope that the hundred or so people in front of us were all day hikers and not campers. 🤞

To our surprise, it worked out, and we got a campsite. So I’ve got a tip for you Seattle folks: just do the whole weekend camping in Rainier, don’t do a day hike. Or… somehow arrive before 8am.

Anyway, after finally setting up camp we were finally ready to set off on a hike. Due to the late start, we opted for a trail that left right from the campground: Burroughs Mountain. We added the extension to the Third Burrough peak making the overall stats on this 12.7 mi, 4100 ft elev gain.

The Burroughs

classic Rainier alpine meadow, on the way up

The Burroughs Mountain has three peaks that the typical route visits. Our route was slightly different since we were coming from White River camp; it headed straight to the Second peak.

the ascent begins to get serious (also, hi Rainier!)

same thing, but toss in an extra no-falls-allowed snow challenge

at the Second peak, a great viewpoint with lots of scree

Second peak, facing other direction; i meant it about the scree!

From here, the hike over to the Third peak feels like yet more work after you’ve already worked so hard to get to a peak, but what makes the Third peak cool is how its viewpoint overlooks a massive glacier.

Rainier welcomes you as you descend from Second peak towards Third

glaciers are ice that slowly FLOWS and you can sort of see that here at Winthrop Glacier

When you’re this close to a glacier, you can hear it “groaning” as the moving ice shifts and cracks form from different parts moving at different speeds. Until I learned about this phenomenon, I thought I was hearing small avalanches occurring.

After this it was mostly descent as we made our way back to camp.

two dudes taking the fast way down from the third peak

I’d do this hike again in a heartbeat.

Day 48: Panhandle Gap

Last day at Rainier, one last big day hike. Today’s plan: Wonderland Trail to Panhandle Gap (11.1 mi, 3200 ft elev gain).

By the way, the Wonderland Trail is the name of the 93-mile trail that circles the entirety of Rainier. Day hikes like this one overlap with bits of it. The full trail sounds like a fun week-long backpacking trip. 😉

There isn’t much to say about this trail other than that it offered more of Rainier’s classic beauty. I’ll let the pics (er, and captions) do the rest of the talking.

mount adams again! but viewed from pandhandle gap

heading back down, getting pretty good at walking through snow at this point

Overall, as a hiker, Mount Rainier National Park is now one of my favorite. It didn’t quite edge out Glacier NP for me, but both Skyline + Camp Muir as well as the Burroughs Mountain Loop are definitely up there in my top 10 hikes of the trip so far.

Just like Glacier NP though, we hiked quite a lot!

Day	Distance (mi)	Elev. gain (ft)	Hike
8/4	7.5	2700	Comet Falls to Mildred
8/5	10.2	4800	Skyline + Camp Muir
8/6	12.7	4100	Burroughs Mountain
8/7	11.1	3200	Panhandle Gap
Total	41.5	14800

Day 49: Off to Olympic

After four hiking-only days in Rainier, we also had plenty of chores that needed attending. Together with the long drive to Olympic National Park, today was a day of mostly work and little fun.

Olympic is a pretty huge park too, making it difficult to explore it all while based in a single place. We decided to at least start by getting a first-come-first-serve site at Heart O’ The Hills campground in the north and play it by ear after that.

post originally written 9/10, backdated to match reality