dare2go

Mt. Rainier National Park


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We left Windy Ridge quite late in the day and drove, with a certain amount of trepidation, back along the same road. While driving in we were mostly on the mountain side of the road, driving out we spent most of our time at the cliff edge... But we stopped several times to catch our breath and to wonder at the power of nature as evidenced in both the destruction and regeneration in this place. We camped back on a forest road and slept well in the absolute quiet. We woke on Monday to total fog which stayed around until we drove out, making our way to our next volcano in the Cascades - Mt Rainier.

Thursday, 20 July 2006, Kanascat-Palmer Recreation Area,
Black Diamond, WA
We have just spent 3 glorious days exploring Mt Rainier National Park. The weather has, for the most part, been clear and sunny and excellent for photography - and there is an unending supply of material here!
Mt Rainier, the tallest of the Cascade Mountain Range volcanoes, is 14,410 feet high and has 26 major glaciers. The National Park was established in 1899 and covers an area of over 230,000 acres. On Monday morning we entered the south-west corner of the park which is nearly directly north of the part of Mt St Helens we left. We took about 2 hours to reach the park entry and drove almost directly to Cougar Rock Campground, stopping once to photograph the volcano from Kautz Creek - from here the volcano looks like a quite ordinary mountain, complete with snow-capped peak. We had read that you need reservations in this park in summer but hoped that since it was a weekday there would be some unreserved sites. As it turned out, there were many to choose from and, our choice made, we proceeded toward Paradise Visitors Centre.
There are plenty of stopping points as you progress through the park. They tend to be viewpoints of Mt Rainier or waterfalls, which abound here. Glacial waters rush down the mountain and cause spectacular falls over rock, which has been carved and marked in earlier times when the glaciers came much lower down. The first we came to were Christine Falls. From the road they seemed to be not much more than a short drop, but when we walked down under the bridge to the viewpoint, they looked pretty impressive. The rock work here on the bridges is as impressive in places as what we saw on the Historic Columbia River Highway.
Our next stop before reaching Paradise was the lookout at Ricksecker Point. From here there is a magnificent view of Mt Rainier, providing it is not covered in low cloud! There was a line of photographers along the wall waiting for the remaining cloud to move away so they could get the perfect shot. One was heard to say that he had been waiting 2 hours already. We waited a bit and got some nice shots with some cloud wafting around the summit, but later in the day we were lucky enough to have several cloud-free vistas of the mountain. From this point it is also possible to look up the Nisqually River valley towards the end of the Nisqually Glacier. We could clearly see where it had been when it was much further down the valley, and its current end was just in view.
Paradise was extremely busy - it seems to be the most popular place to stop in the park. The congestion is not helped by the fact that they are restoring and rebuilding in an area which has closed a large car park. All I can say is, thank god it wasn't the weekend! There are showers available at the visitors centre and we decided to make use of them after we had walked one of the many trails that originate at Paradise. We chose the Nisqually Vista Trail, which gives amazing views of the mountain, but also much closer views of the Nisqually Glacier.
However, the most impressive part of this walk was the meadows covered in wildflowers and grasses that had just come up after the recent snow melt. Mt Rainier's subalpine meadows receive an enormous amount of snow and the flowers therefore have a very short growing season. They seem to work very hard and very fast to produce their flowers and proceed through their reproduction cycle before the snow comes again. There were still some patches of snow on the ground and we could see the plants poking their green shoots through the snow as soon as the snow was thin enough to allow them. Since I didn't grow up with snow every winter, I think I found this whole process even more amazing than Juergen did, although he also marvelled at the masses of white flowers - Avalanche Lilies, we think - that would begin to flower almost as soon as they had one or two leaves on them, and then think about growing more leaves. Even the bees buzzing around are very small - they have so little time to do their work that they can't waste it growing! And on top of all this, the flowers are just beautiful.
Tuesday started out quite cold, and there was no sun to be had in the campground as it was full of tall trees. We were moving slowly as a result, but since we had woken very early, we were on the road again soon after 9.00 - early for us! We were heading towards White River Campground in the north-east, so that we could check out Sunrise the next day. Our first stop was Narada Falls. My main reason for stopping here was to find a 'restroom' - here it was called a 'comfort station' and must have been built in the 40's or 50's. Since we were stopped, I decided to walk down to the viewpoint of the waterfall, and was so glad I did. One of the prettiest waterfalls I have seen!
Our next stop was Paradise Valley, after which the Paradise area was named. The young daughter of one of the earliest settlers, on seeing the valley for the first time, commented that this must be what paradise is like - the name stuck! From a little further down the road we got a view down to where we had been earlier at Narada Falls. We realised just how far we had climbed from there, and the roads almost look more scary when you look down on them like that, than when you are actually driving them.
We stopped again when we reached Reflection Lakes. Unfortunately it was just a little windy, which disturbed the surface of the lake, but Juergen managed to get some excellent shots of it nevertheless. Once again a very patient photographer was set up by the lake in a patch of snow, awaiting the perfect shot! A short distance down the road and another waterfall - Sunbeam Creek. This was a small waterfall and didn't look unlike one that someone might build in their back garden - but this one happened all by itself, without any human help.
The next part of the road covered some amazing switchbacks to work our way up the mountain. We stopped on the other side of them and looked back. As well as being able to follow the path we had just driven, we had a view of Martha's Falls, in between a very dense forest. They fell a long way further down into the valley than we could actually see.
Box Canyon began as a canyon carved by the Cowlitz Glacier, and continues to be shaped by the Cowlitz River since the glacier retreated. Standing on the bridge over the canyon, there is a drop of 180 feet to the bottom of this very narrow canyon. The view of Mt Rainier from Box Canyon is more to the south-west face and the top of the mountain no longer appears to be a peak - it has the more rounded appearance of a volcano that has at some stage erupted, taking its top off! We drove on and took our last view of the south-western face of Mt Rainier from Backbone Ridge, before heading north on the 123 towards Sunrise. We were held up for about 15 minutes by roadworks on the way, but I must admit that the roads with fresh tar seem to still be as bumpy as the unrenovated parts! Driving past the road workers on their large machines, I was glad I only had to drive these roads, not rebuild them on the side of this very steep mountain.
White River Campground is on the bank of the White River (surprisingly enough!) and gives an amazing view of the north-western face of Mt Rainier. Wednesday morning dawned bright and clear - and 5°C! We had thought it cold at Cougar Rock Campground, where it was 10!!! At least here we had found a site without such dense tree cover, and there was a rather large patch of sunlight to thaw out in... We had considered staying 2 nights at this campground, but that temperature decided for us that we would drive on out of the park after visiting Sunrise.
At 6400 feet, Sunrise is the highest point in the park that you can drive to. When you arrive in the car park, you almost feel like you can reach out and touch the mountain - it is so close! We chose a walk which took us first to Sunrise Camp - a rustic campground for hikers taking longer trails over a period of days or even weeks. Here we found a family of marmots living. They didn't really seem to bother that we were there at all. From there we walked up a very steep trail to a viewpoint from which you can clearly see the Emmons Glacier and the north-western face of Mt Rainier. I stopped to catch my breath before taking a look over the stone wall, and then lost it all over again - it was one of the most breathtaking views we had had, amongst days of breathtaking views (actually months, I suppose!!!) Glaciers are incredible things - I find it hard to conceive of the fact that they actually move - it gives one a whole different perspective of the passing of time. From a distance it looks almost as if they are just another rocky part of the mountain, and then it is possible to pick out the icy end-point. In this case there was also a small amount of blue ice visible, as well as the brown, and then the glacial melt appearing to flow out of a hole in the end of the glacier.
We walked back by a different route to Sunrise, and had continual views of the glacier for at least half the way. Once again on this walk we were impressed by the magnificent display of wildflowers. They were more profuse in both number and variety than we had seen anywhere so far. I continued to marvel over the way they make their short growing span so productive.
After lunch at Sunrise and a short stop at the Sunrise Point overlook, we drove out of Mt Rainier National Park and left the magnificent vistas behind. I must admit to feeling more relaxed on the relatively flat and straight section of highway through the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest north of Mt Rainier, than I had for a number of days. I can put my vertigo away again for a while at least - I hope!
We were on our way to Tacoma, just south of Seattle, and had no real idea where we would stay - we just knew we didn't really want to drive that far as it was getting late in the day, and we were tired after the exercise, the altitude and the mountain air. We drove into the outskirts of Enumclaw, and saw a sign pointing to a State Park with a campground. It was 9 miles further north that we found the Kanaskat-Palmer Recreation Area. It's a nice leafy campground situated in a bend of the Green River, and offers showers (for a fee) and the option of powered sites. The State Parks in Washington are almost as good as the ones we found in Oregon. They seem to offer better facilities than the National Parks or Forests.
Today we head back into an urban area again. Hopefully we can find somewhere away from highways, train lines and airports...