Tastes and Trails: The Road From Sunrise to Paradise

Our first view of Mt. Rainier had telephone wires, a drug store, and traffic lights. And it was still magnificent. Rainier is a volcano, snow-covered and rising out of the ground with a demanding presence. I was immediately in love.

A few hours later we had set up our tent in the White River Campground, eaten another avocado, and Rachel had nestled into the hammock with her Kindle. We spent the afternoon reading, not writing a blog. Sorry. We did have some pretty decent views from our site, and there was a steady stream of climbers both headed up and down the 14,411’ massif passing by our site.

The view from our campsite.

The following morning we drove up to Sunrise to hike Mt. Fremont (7,100'). Although it wasn't incredibly early, it was still early enough where there weren't many people on the roads. The Turtle and Trig enjoyed the quiet and weren't phased by the mosquitoes, either.

We ate breakfast sitting in the parking lot staring up at Rainier and its many glaciers. There are only a few other breakfasts I've had in which the view was better.

The hike was beautiful. Our starting elevation was close to 6,800' and so there wasn't a whole lot of gain. The trail gradually went up and along a ridge. The white snow was contrasting with the colorful wildflowers, hard-edged stone and blue sky. The trail ended at another lookout, and the views were, once again, spectacular. I'm just going to let the pictures tell the story:

Mount Fremont

Dwarf lupine

White mountain heather

Pasqueflower

Before we left for the day, we had to stop by the visitors' center. It explained a lot about the formation of Rainier and what could happen if it erupted again. It also said that the ash from the Mt. Mazama eruption (which created Crater Lake) fell as far away as Greenland. On our way down we stopped at a very cool geologic feature. The columns we saw were formed when lava was cooled very quickly (like touching a glacier). The cooling lava pointed toward its cooling source.

The next day we went to the southeast corner of the park, where we visited the Grove of the Patriarchs. This is an island of old growth forest with trees approaching heights of 200' and 1,000 years old. One thousand! It's mind-blowing to think of what has happened in their lifetime. Crazy. It was a bit of a preview of what we'd see during our stay in Olympic National Park. These are BIG trees.

Douglas fir

A big cedar

After wandering with the patriarchs, we took a quick drive over to Paradise. After checking in with the a ranger, we decided to head up to Panorama Point (6,800'). The hike up was along the Nisqually Glacier. The valley from this glacier was huge. Pictures are to follow. The hike was entirely in snow, and the views were magnificent. We could see Mt. Adams, Mt. Shasta, and Mt. St. Helens, all which are prominent volcanoes in the Cascade range.