Burroughs Mountain — Sunday, Jul. 14, 2013

Mount Rainier Area > NE - Sunrise/White River

This is such a great day hike, with huge payoffs for relatively little effort. We took the northern route past Frozen Lake on the way up and then completed the loop by going back via the southern rim trail on the way back. I highly recommend doing the loop to see the most variety in scenery, even though it does add about 0.5 mi to the trip length. We stopped at Second Burroughs and had lunch while enjoying the jaw-dropping views before turning around. From the top of Second, we could see people continuing on to Third Burroughs across ever increasing snow, but it still looked very doable to keep going. Could see a whole line of climbers going up the Emmons-Winthrop summit route, and bunch of people threading up the Inter Glacier, presumably to Schurman. Could also see all the way to downtown Seattle and Bellevue with the naked eye, as well as Glacier Peak and Mt. Baker. The trail is generally in good shape, but there are three significant snowfields to cross if you were to do the loop -- two on the northern flank of First Burroughs and one on the southern flank. The first one on the northern flank is relatively minor, but the other two should be taken seriously, as a fall would probably be really bad news with the steep slopes and drop-offs. This is especially true of the most exposed section on the southern rim. I would not have crossed any of these without poles, but we did see other people go ahead without them just fine. It all depends on how comfortable you are with risk. In my opinion, if you cross slowly and deliberately, check your footing at every step, and don't look down, the snow crossings are not a significant problem at this time. It does look like they will be there for a few more weeks still, as they were still fairly deep.