Spray Park — Saturday, Jul. 22, 2006

Mount Rainier Area > NW - Carbon River/Mowich

This was another first for me this year. We came for the flowers and were not disappointed. Glorious paintbrush, bluebells, avalanche and glacier lilies, bracketed lousewort, bear grass in full bloom, heather, lupine (with marmots munching upon), a few select tiger lilies, one deer, 2 marmots, 500 billion little and huge biting flies, 400 billion mosquitoes, at least 200-300 hikers, 4 skiers, one rude trail runner and 2 rangers were sighted. The trail starts by descending 300 feet before the 2200 foot ascent. The trail is in excellent shape and only has a few moments of knee torture and dust eating. Make sure you do all of the side trail viewpoints! Each meadow was in a slightly different phase of bloom. And the views from the top were stupendous. We stopped at the first large snowfield that looked to be easily enough crossed. Temps seemed to be around 10 degrees less than at the lake but this hike in this weeks weather needs tons of water and salt replacement. Thanks to the NWHikers forums I tried something new: An all cotton shirt that was soaked with body cooling sweat the entire hike. This really works in the heat wave temps! The road is also easily drivable by the standard sedan.