Not alot of snow at Paradise. The trail was snow covered but not deep, bare to 4? inches. Just a little icy and by the afternoon very slushy. Wind and light rain, or as my husband called it a "wind-driven mist". Very foggy all day. Could hear the Nisqually Glacier cracking but couldn't see it. We just went up to Pebble Creek junction and doubled back. The hot coco at the Visitor Center was sooooo good.

The weather was sunny and clear. The parking lot at Paradise was very crowded because it was the opening weekend of the new Vistor Center. The trail starts off paved and straight up. We saw a bear within the first 10 minutes of the hike. It was about 50 yards off the trail eating plants. The fall colors are amazing. It takes about 30 minutes to weed out the tourists from the hikers. You start running into people with 60lb packs that are headed to Camp Muir and eventually the summit. I'm not fit enough for that yet. We went from hot and sweaty to really cold. It changed very quickly. The trail became covered in snow. Not deep but annoying slippery and slow going. There is an amazing lookout area at the top of the loop before you head down the other side. You have great views of Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens. The backside had 2 different ways to get back to Paradise. We chose to remain on the Skyline trail, instead of taking the short cut (golden something) which would have saved us about an hour. It is really weird how many people you run into once you get within 20 minutes of Paradise. All the tourists dressed in fancy clothes and going picture crazy. The hike took us 5 hours. I've heard that people can do it in 4 hours without the snow and hanging out at the look out.

~ Yesterday, my friend Tom and I went up to Camp Muir at Mt Rainier National Park (do we have a GREAT backyard or what?) for those who just want the pictures (106 of them), they are here-Camp Muir Adventure Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wildcelticrose/sets/72157607552754968/ This, like our Eastern Washington adventure was one of those “spur of the moment-just short of a dare” plans concocted over adult beverages. Lisa+Tom+Alcohol=let's go have an adventure. Actually, he was quite “shocked and appalled” that I had never been all the way up to Camp Muir. (the green tent symbol on the map) http://nelsonstuff.net/images/rainier/CampMuir.jpg I knew this would be “interesting” since I haven't been hiking this summer, and certainly haven't spent any appreciable time above sea level. It doesn't matter how much swimming or biking I've been doing, or that I've done three triathlons (the training for, along with late snow is what kept me off the hiking trails) hiking muscles and biking muscles are different and I am not acclimated of altitude of any kind at the moment. We would ascend approximately 4,600 feet up the mountain to an altitude of 10,000 feet; 2,800 feet of that up the Muir Snowfields (which turned out to be a light crust of fresh stuff, over old stuff, over ice with water running under and through it; good times) Oh, and THIS sign? We scoffed at it. Big “people eating” crevasses almost never open up on the Muir Snowfields. (more on this later) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3127/2894799449_909e186c5c.jpg I was most definitely having an “off” morning. I had stayed up too late the night before with friends and thought it would be easy to grab my stuff and throw it in the pack. I didn't feel quite “right” when I woke up and the morning got worse from there. I could not find my stupid gaiters to save my life, even after tearing my apartment apart. That threw me behind on everything else. But I managed to find my YakTraxs for traction (in some places it would have been nice to have my crampons) a hydration bladder that wasn't growing weird stuff inside, my safety gear, ten essentials and (as it turns out, not quite enough) food and managed to be ready to go, only 5 minutes late. We were on the road to the mountain (“the mountain” in our case is Tahoma, Mt Rainier's real name) at 6:35 AM and a beautiful day was in the making (there were rumors of showers in the morning, but they did not appear.) I drank a bottle of NUUN electrolytes the night before and drank one on the way up. It was a beautiful morning at Paradise! That's when I discovered that I had not screwed the cap on my hydration bladder (field test version from work that I have terrible scores to and thankfully we did not market) and it emptied its self out inside my pack. My hat, gloves and other items were soaked and I literally poured water out of my pack. I laid things out to dry and headed over to the lodge to put more water in bladder (and screw the cap on all the way) Here's a view from the new lodge http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3052/2894717677_49e16bcc11.jpg and here's a shot from inside the new lodge http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3289/2894726441_0899d21841.jpg We headed up the trail at about 9:00 AM (a bit later than planned, but who cares, it was a beautiful day) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3046/2894728551_721c3db117.jpg It takes me a while to warm up but felt fine after about 20 minutes. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3076/2895590164_795f2bfd3d.jpg We scoffed at this warning sign (even though we've both been in a white out up there) too because it was going to be a beautiful day. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3292/2895599974_5c85c606ea.jpg We should not have tempted fate/karma/the mountain because that's when the clouds moved in and chased us well into the snowfields. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3250/2894897731_95fdf3976c.jpg At about 8,700 feet, I was well into the “bite me” zone, which quickly turned into the “I suck” zone when I was frustrated with myself of succumbing to altitude and having to stop and rest frequently. (and holding someone who scampers up this mountain regularly back) The thing that was odd, was that my heart rate wasn't all that high, and I wasn't breathing all that hard, but I was exceptionally fatigued. (I don't take “clues” well) I offered Tom the option of turning back because I was pretty disgusted with myself for how slowly I was making progress, and was concerned that I wouldn't be able to turn this trip around in a reasonable amount of time. Being a good guy, he put up with me. Of course, it's not like It wasn't steep and relentless. I didn't give myself credit for that until I sat down for a food/water break and watched other people trudging up the slope. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3294/2894890579_e64ef460ce.jpg The worst part was ahead of us, as parts of the snowfields were melting off under the snow and ice creating raging underground rivers (very cool sounding, yet creepy at the same time) There was crusty snow, on water, on ice which made for very tricky footing and finding the occasional hole (a few of which were definite “leg breakers” The motto of the day, “HA! We cheated death again!” (not really, but it sounded good) The climbers we saw coming down, had not made it to the top (no one did yesterday) because of high winds and avalanches. They started out from Camp Muir at 12:00 – 2:00 AM only to have to turn back at 12,000 feet at the top of Disappointment Cleaver (named that for a reason) It would not be a big deal to us, but those who came from Russia and other far away places it is a HUGE disappointment (the very nice guys we chatted with from Russia are here for three months so they may still make it, the guys from Utah were out of luck) You can see a bit of the wind up top in this picture which I took from Camp Muir http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3292/2895906196_668184b3c9.jpg When we got near Anvil Rock Camp Muir was in sight and we started cutting diagonally across the snowfield. The rangers were having people stay to the far right and approach the camp from the top, but there were a lot of big rocks coming down there, so we opted to carefully probe and work our way across the crevasse. img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3088/2894888297_5fbba8fa47.jpg Crevasses? We had crevasses, several of them big enough to fall into and get really hurt! (I thought they were cool and took lots of pictures!) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/2895782834_b211887eca.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3273/2895797150_b67f446fee.jpg We picked our way through the minecrevasse field and headed up to Camp Muir to enjoy the sun and chatting with people all over the world who had come to climb and/or stay the night at Camp Muir. (the difficulty of this trip weeds out the riff raff/tundra trompers/marmot feeders) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3279/2895042345_6e044b97f5.jpg And of course, photo ops above the clouds with Mt Adams in the background. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3101/2895888960_99338595e8.jpg After enjoying the sun and company, we started the long, slippery slog back down. Even with YakTraxs I did a lot of slipping and sliding and almost went down several times. My legs felt fine going up, but down was pretty hard on them. Ten hours after we started our little adventure, we were back down at Paradise, after watching a very pretty sunset from the Skyline Trail. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3293/2895094111_6e9e63e2ae.jpg Oh, and the reason I felt so bad? I'm SICK darn it, with a fever and everything. Darn kids go back to school, give germ to their parents, who come to work and spread the love. (riding public transit does not help either) By the time we got off the snowfields, my sinuses where plugged and I had a pounding, nauseating sinus headache which threatened to go migraine on me, on the left side of my face right behind the eye and was very chilled. (no, it was not altitude sickness, I know the difference, and felt pretty darn good, was well hydrated and had a normal pulse rate at 10,000 feet) So today, I'm a resting (was going to do a bike ride on Vashon Island, maybe next weekend?) and making up for all the calories I burned and didn't replace yesterday (better to keep what I had down, than eat and puke) Even sick it was an AWESOME day! ~L

Set out from parking lot at Paradise Inn at around 9:45 AM. Took paved path past Myrtle Falls and took trail to right when I came to junction with Golden Gate trail. Nice views of Mt Rainier this morning and wildflowers still blooming in meadows. Trail switches back uphill to junction with Reflection Lakes trail. Went left at junction (stayed on Skyline trail). Went short distance and took spur trail to Paradise Glacier. Saw couple ahead and reached them toward the end of the trail. They told me they had hiked this trail 20 years ago when they first met. There were ice caves and a real glacier terminus back then. Now it is just a snowfield. A sign states end of maintained trail. I hiked on the snowfield a ways and saw some people way up above on the Skyline trail. I decided to traverse back that way. Went down to a creek and crossed then up a semi-steep snowfield. Reconnected with Skyline trail. Saw lady just up ahead and then saw a young bear. I caught up to the lady in an attempt to warn her about the bear. An older man had also seen it and the 3 of us all snapped photos of the bear. I got a couple of photos with groups doing ice axe training far in the background. The bear didn't seem bothered by people. It wandered westward and we continued to see it off and on as we hiked toward Panorama Point. The older man informed us of his age (73) and the fact that he had arthroscopic knee surgery about 3 weeks ago. This was his first hike since and he seemed to do really well. We took the lower trail across a snowfield to Panorama Point. Best to have an ice axe or trekking poles if you choose this shortcut trail. Took lunch at the point and enjoyed the great views. We again saw the bear far below. After lunch I bid my new friends goodbye and continued on the Skyline trail back to Paradise parking lot. Looks like the new visitor center is nearing completion. It will be sad to see the old 60's era spaceship building go, I have a certain fondness for it, but that's progress. Will return to do Reflection Lakes loop when I have more time.

Rainier in June 15th thru 18th 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------< P>Wednesday -- Nisqually Vista -------------- We arrived late and I opted for an easy afternoon stroll. Nisqually Vista via the Avalanche Lily trail provided a new view of Mt. Rainier. The Vista trail goes to the brink of the steep deep glacier canyon. It gives a dramatic view of the mountain, which was beautiful white against a deep blue, cirrus streaked sky, with the gray glacier snout deep below in the canyon. A couple of tiny snow patches were on the trail which did have many thousand white avalanche lilies all around it in the awakening meadows. Thursday --- Snow & Bench lakes ----------- We came early this year to be sure to see the lilies in bloom. This day was my lily jackpot, millions of avalanche lilies lining the trail and covering the meadows. The gray overcast provided excellent light for flower photography. At the end of the trail Unicorn Peak cut a powerful and stately shape above glass still Snow lake. The Snow lake trail is a thousand feet lower than Paradise and so the meadows had had 3 or 4 more snow free weeks to develop their early season flower show. Much more was blooming than up at Paradise yesterday, 22 species at least. I was the lone hiker this morning . I explored around the lakes and a little up on the snow field just below Unicorn. On the way back I met a mother with a 4 year old son enjoying some of the lake views and water. The trail goes up and down, up and down ending at the same elevation as it started. So you get more of a work out than a casual glance at the map would indicate. This is a beautiful , peaceful, uncrowded trail close to Paradise yet with only 1 % of the people. Friday -- Skyline Trail to Mazama Ridge & Van Trump Monument -------- This day was mostly cloudy after the overnight rain yet Rainier was visible in the sun during 98% of my hiking time. I started from Paradise Lodge up the Skyline trail north east towards Mazama ridge and the junction with the Lakes trail and then went North up to the Stevens / Van Trump monument at 6000 ft. where I had a solitary lunch. The first photo opportunity was at the Myrtle falls view point where the mountain posed for me above the falls. Again the early season flowers were superb, with this trail being loaded with lilies (glacier & avalanche), anemone, and several other species. Many more flowers than were out lower down by the lodge. There was patchy snow ascending the switchbacks on the north side of Mazama ridge and again up by the monument. Once up on the ridge I had a superb view of the Tatoosh range, snow capped with green forests and meadows below. From my lunch spot I watched a mountaineering class ascending a snow slope above me near Panorama point. The big mountain dominated the view, with some glacier streams and little waterfalls in the middle ground and snow, rock, and flowers at my feet. On the way back I detoured slightly to admire some more little falls, and mini rock gardens. Saturday - Comet Falls (Van Trump Park trail) ----------- This mostly sunny day was designated for waterfalls and Van Trump creek delivers, with 5 great visible falls (and several invisible in the canyon) on the way up to Comet, the best falls in the park, a 320 ft. plunge into rainbow pools below. This trail is very steep, steep, and very steep again before flattening some on the final approach to Comet falls. At the junction of the two forks of Van Trump creek I got a surprise. The big sturdy bridge is gone, washed away by the glacial outburst flood of 2 years ago. In it's place is a single log bridge with a wire handrail. Not very comforting for crossing a dozen feet above a raging stream. I took pictures of Comet from above and below and then found a good lunch spot just below it with some other hikers. This was my last lily photo day in the park and there were excellent specimens in the little clearings from 4600 ft. on up to Comet falls at 5000. I also found excellent Jeffrey Shooting Star's a little lower. Returning to the car and then the lodge to pick up Marjie, I was very pleased with these 4 days in Rainier's early summer floral splendor. Robert Michelson