Mt. Rainier National Park
View of Mt Rainier from near White Pass
Mt. Rainier is my favorite mountain in North America. I've visited the park many time over the years. I even climbed the mountain many years ago. This year for my birthday, Sandy suggested that we make a trip to Mt. Rainier some time in July. She made reservations for three nights at a hotel in Packwood, a small town south of the National Park. It's one of the few places you can stay overnight without camping, something that Sandy isn't fond of. I will admit that as I've gotten older I have become spoiled too. I enjoy "hotel camping" on our trips to the mountains.
We had one small glitch before we left. We also had planned a trip to northern Idaho to visit my sister. She called us and said that some family issues required changing the dates we had picked. The only ones available were the ones we had planned to go to Rainier. Fortunately we were able to do a swap and soon everything was set with the new dates.
We can see the mountain as we start our hike
Since we are retired, we did our usual travel-in-the middle-of-the-week to avoid crowds. They seem to be getting worse every year at national parks. We left on a Tuesday and had an easy drive to Packwood. We made our usual stop on the way in Prosser Washington. There is a winery there, Thurston Wolfe, that we particularly like. Whenever we drive that way we stop and pick up a case of their PGV (Pinot Gris/Viognier blend) wine. Unfortunately it turned out that they were closed on Tuesday. We didn't think it was a big deal. We would just stop on the way home to stock up on wine.
We were able to find a good fruit stand in Naches, just past Yakima. We got a huge bag of rainier cherries, which both Sandy and I really like. It was particularly fitting since it was July 11, which is National Rainier Cherry Day. After that is was straight to Packwood, unless you count a brief stop at the viewpoint near White Pass. With a bright blue sky and just a few clouds, the view of Rainier was stunning. And oh yeah. We had to stop for about ten minutes for road construction.
We reached Packwood in the late afternoon and checked into the Crest Trail Lodge. Just west of town, it is one of only about four hotels in Packwood. Our room was quite nice and we started to settle in. As I unpacked, I hung up some of my stuff on a small clothes rack bolted to the wall. A few minutes later there was a bang and one of the anchors pulled right out of the sheet rock. Fortunately the other three bolts held but I took everything off the rack. I had to go to the front desk and tell them about the problem. They were very apologetic and promised to fix it in the morning. They did indeed take care of it while we were out hiking the next day. I was a bit gunshy though and was not going to hang anything up after that. Everything stayed in my suitcase.
Clouds moved in quickly after we started - no views now
We had three nights in Packwood which would work out well since there are only three sitdown restaurants in town: a pizza place, a Mexican place and a bar and grill. Sandy wanted to try Mexican and I agreed since it was the only place we hadn't been to before. The food was good and it was fortunate we were early as the place had completely filled up by the time we left.
After dinner we went back to the hotel. I read while Sandy watched Hallmark movies. It was All Star break so there wasn't a Brewer game.
Next morning we were up early. Sandy is a morning person so it was no big deal for her but even I was up and ready to go by 6:30 am. Since we had an early start we decided it would be our day to go to Paradise. It can get really crowded there and parking can be nearly impossible to find. We wanted to get there as early as possible. We drove east out of town on US 12 and circled around to the Stevens Canyon Entrance to the park.
Blue skies begin to appear on the way down
...and found that the Stevens Canyon Road was closed. A sign said that it was only open on weekends. I was pretty upset since I had looked at the park website the night before and hadn't seen anything about the closure. Checking later, I did find where it was mentioned, but it was not at all obvious. As someone who has done website design, I think both the Park Service and Forest Service have websites that look very pretty but are really quite useless in terms of providing the kind of information that a visitor would actually want. </end rant >
There was no cell service so we went old school and checked the paper map that I had brought along. I found a Forest Road that went north from Packwood and connected with the road that went to the entrance in the southwest corner of the park. That meant we had to turn around and drive back to Packwood. With cell service, we stopped there long enough to check on the condition of the road we were going to take. We read that it was poorly maintained with lots of potholes, but was paved all the way. We didn't have another good choice so off we went. As chess players say, forced moves are easy.
Colorful flowers and rugged mountains
It turned out we needn't have worried. Although the road had a lot of twists and turns, it was in good shape. We got to Paradise about 8:30, an hour later than we had planned, but we still found a parking spot, so all was good. The forecast was for early morning clouds clearing by afternoon. There were some low clouds but I was optimistic since we could still see the mountain as we started out. That changed quickly. After only a few minutes the mountain had disappeared. The forecast didn't matter. Mt. Rainier makes it's own weather.
Our plan was to do the Skyline Trail. It's a 5.5 to 6 mile trail (depending on which source you believe) with about 1800 feet of elevation gain. I had read comments on some Washington hiking sites that there was snow on the upper parts of the trail but I figured we could always turn around if it was a problem. The trail began climbing right away. In fact at the start it wasn't even a trail, just a long series of stone steps rising from the parking lot. No easy start for us. It was steep from the very beginning. There were also a LOT of people on the trail and all of them seemed to be going up faster than me. Young people, old people, little kids, climbers with huge packs. All of them were passing me. Good thing I'm not proud.
We had beautiful views of the Tatoosh Range on the way down
We kept climbing for a long time but eventually decided to turn around a little short of Panorama Point. We couldn't see the mountain and it looked like there was a lot of snow on the trail above us. Once we started down we had more of a view. We could see the Tatoosh Range to the south beyond Paradise. As we got lower we came out into the sun even if the mountain behind us was still in clouds. The slopes around us were all a beautiful deep green, quite a contrast to our mountains in Idaho. There were quite a few wildflowers even though they don't peak until August. There were also a lot of marmots. We saw them perched on rocks watching as we went by. We could hear their distinctive warning whistles as we walked along. At one point, a marmot came down a slope onto the trail and scurried right past us. It definitely didn't seem to be too afraid of us. They are cool animals and I don't think I've ever seen that many of them on one hike.
Edith Creek
Since we hadn't done the full loop, near the end we took a detour for a half mile to see Myrtle Falls. It turned out that the short side trail to view the falls was closed so we could just see Edith Creek rushing over a cliff and disappearing. It was still worth the side trip as even above the falls the cascades were impressive.
After the hike we stopped at the Paradise Inn. Although there had been lots of people on the trail, there was harldy anyone at the lodge. We got drinks at the snack bar and were able to sit at one of the few tables on the patio. When we were sufficiently rested and rehydrated, we checked out the gift shops in both the lodge and the Visitor Center. By then we'd spent almost four hours in our two hour parking space and figured it was time to head back. On the way out of the park we made brief stops at Narada Falls and Christine Falls, as well as the gift shop at Longmire. We might have missed something at the other two gift shops, after all.
Narada Falls
By now we were both really hungry. As soon as we were out of the park we stopped at the Wildberry Restaurant for a late lunch. It featured "Traditional American Mountain Menu as well as select Authentic Himalayan-Sherpa Cuisine". Rather eclectic. It turns out the owner is an ex climbing Sherpa from Nepal. In fact, not just any climbing Sherpa, but the holder of the record for the fastest ascent of Everest from base camp, although the record is somewhat controversial. Eight hours or eleven hours, it's still mind boggling to me.
I was tempted to go with a Sherpa dish. My favorite from my treks in Nepal is momos, a type of dumpling stuffed with either meat or vegetables. This restaurant only had pork momos which made me a little nervous. I only like very lean meat and it is too easy to hide fatty meat inside a dumpling. I ate a lot of momos on my trips to Nepal but only vegetable ones. I ended up being a wimp and ordered a grilled cheese sandwhich. I was hungry though so it still tasted really good. By the time we got back to our hotel it was late afternoon and we were content to just hang out in our room.
Our plan for the next morning was to head back into the park. This time we would go to Sunrise and do the hike to Fremont Mountain Lookout. We needed to leave very early again to avoid congestion. I managed to fall asleep relatively early so I was up at 6:00 and we were on the road by 6:30. When we stopped at the gas station C-store before leaving town to get a doughnut, Sandy mentioned that her stomach was a bit off. She was game to do the hike anyway but after talking about it for a bit we decided to abort. We went back to the motel, packed up our stuff, and started for home. The lady at the hotel was nice and gave us a refund for the extra night that we had booked. She said that this close to the weekend she would be able to rent out the room easily.
The drive back was easy. The only bad thing was that we passed through Prosser too early to stop at Thurston Wolfe to pick up wine. We did go to my other favorite spot there, Chukar Cherries. I got two jars of their Sour Cherry Pie filling, which I put on English muffins. I also got a bag of their delicious chocolate covered cherry candies.
We were home by dinner time. Of course, Abby was glad to see us home early.
