Short hike mid-day today at Sunrise, sourdough ridge, gusty winds at top of ridge and snow! Wildflowers still blooming,shows we always need be prepared for winter conditions. Glad I was! Mt R showed briefly inbetween snow and rain squalls. A trip to Sunrise is always worthwhile even when rainy/snowy.

My friend Lucky Pierre and I hiked Sourdough Ridge-Sunrise Pt trail (starts behind the Sunrise Visitor Center) this morning, with side trip to Dege Peak, which has a terrific 360-degree view. Temperatures were in the 50's and 60's. This trail is familiar I am sure to most WTA people; just wanted to let you all know there were NO BUGS.

Starting at 5400' is a great advantage. Sure, there are tons of people here but start mid afternoon; you'll still have plenty of time and lose most of the crowd. Trail to Sourdough Gap is easy, a good hike with kids or early season. Continue past the first gap to a fork in the trail and stay on the upper route. At a scant 1/4 mile is another gap, the entrance to the Park, and great views of Rainier. No bugs. Bonus: Hwy 410 is the only route back into Seattle that doesn't clog up on Sunday evenings, it's almost heavenly driving home. Naches Tavern in Greenwater is way overrated but sadly I have nothing better to recommend. Avoid the chili!

Imagine my surprise when asking Christopher last weekend what things he would like me to do with him this birthday ""week"" of his when he plain and simple stated, ""I want to go to Mount Rainier"". For a soon to be six-year old boy on July 1st, his only world of hiking in the ""real"" mountains is seeing them from our cabin, including Mount Rainier. But he has grown fond of The Mountain and he wanted to actually see it up close. Thus the weather held for us and today we headed to the NE corner of the park to the Sunrise area.

Heck with hiking...Alan here just wanted to get in to Sunrise when it was still JUNE for goodness sake! All of my many previous visits were primarily fall hikes when the crowds are gone and the wildlife is out and very active preparing for winter. The fact that we also actually hiked for 2.5 hours was only a bonus. We almost got to Frozen Lake up along the Sourdough Ridge trail...but one snowfield on a steep slope really wasn't safe for us. Me? Sure, I would have proceeded on carefully. But I really didn't want to have to pick across it with him...and then when he stated, ""Uh, I don't want to go on that. No way. Can we stop here?"" that made it very easy. Bravo for him! So we stopped about 200 yards short of being able to see the lake. Just after turning back Christopher got to enjoy seeing his very first Hoary Marmot and that was a highlight of the day! He laughed as I told him they were called ""whistling pigs"" sometimes. We also saw two baby fawns on the road drive up earlier in the day. The trek from 6400' Sunrise up to Sourdough Ridge was pretty easy as the three large snow traverses still remaining were not in steep areas. I was properly pelted with 43,892 snowballs on the hike today, with many happening in this first 1/2 mile hike to get to the ridge trail. Trail is 20-30% snow at this time. Once on the ridge we hiked west with one deep remaining cornice pile of snow on the trail to go up and over for 100' right away. But a very well stepped ditch in the snow made it easy for the little guy to just follow me up and over it. Western Pasqueflower was blooming in areas as are glacier lilies. Heather is really in bloom. But the greening meadows...with all the green being up shooting wildflowers...will really be a show this year in another 3-4 weeks! We also enjoyed roaming up the Huckleberry Creek trail to the top of the high-point to see the huge snowfield 5-6' deep blocking the way to head down the other side. But watching a few snowballs roll down the hard icy snow was a good example to show Christopher what would happen to US if we slipped on that kind of slope. ""It would be a fun toboggan ride!"" states the 5 year, 364 day old boy. ""Ah, but how would it feel when those rocks 800' down there stopped the sled ride?"", states Daddy. ""Oh."". Lesson learned.

We hiked back to Sunrise to the sight of seeing how fast thunderstorms can blow up east of here. The Mount Aix area would not have been a fun place to be hiking today as towering huge thunderstorms were in progress at 2:00pm where just two hours earlier really no clouds existed. We got a few rumbles of the thunder to reach even up at Sunrise from that far away and could see lightning. We enjoyed more snowballs in the parking lot, toured the visitor center, and started the fun drive down. While I could have used a snooze or two and let him drive me home, I opted to drive and let him have the restful drive home. Nothing like ""Hey, how did we get THIS far so quickly?"" to finish off a good day. We rested up at home a bit before heading to town to eat Mexican food for dinner. He must be getting hooked to being outdoors from his lunch comments of ""nice view of Mount Rainier from my lunch spot...and this P&J sandwich tastes REALLY good today!"". Alan L. Bauer 06/30/2004