After morning stops at Mt St Helens and the afternoon Davis Creek scout, we drove on to enter Mt Rainier National Park through its eastern Stevens Canyon entrance to the exceptionally popular Paradise region. We had last seen Mt Rainier at a 30 mile distance where it was an exceptionally imposing peak coated with glaciers and icefalls, but as we turned the corner crossing Backbone Ridge we got an even more sobering view. Though we were still 10 miles away from the summit, the effect was of having to look upward at a high angle out of the car's windscreen to see it. We stopped at a pullout and I snapped a quick picture (below). Unfortunately soon after clouds invaded and this would be the clearest view we would get of the peak's complex south slopes!
Our late afternoon arrival into Paradise had us meeting a full parking lot with cars parked on the side of the road for over a half-mile away from the visitor center but we managed to snag a well-timed vacancy opening in the lower parking lot. My previous research had suggested the 5.5 mile Skyline Trail loop to be the most exceptional tourist hike on the mountain. Despite the late hour (the days were longer!), we packed for a possible hike across miles of snow and walked up to the visitor center to check it out. We quickly strolled through the crowded building and upstairs exhibits, noting the "not recommended" status of the Skyline Trail and deciding to give it a try anyway. The trail started with a paved strip through lush meadows with a near-constant parade of slow people and strollers to dodge and weave through. I tried to temper my disgust at the shear number of people walking right past "no entry, fragile plants" signs to clod mud over delicate alpine plants so they could snap that more important selfie.
Past Myrtle Falls and then past Paradise Creek the trail finally began gaining elevation with the path covered in near-continuous icy snow. Here Heather put on her microspikes while I chose to stick with my trekking poles as my main form of support. There were still plenty of people for the remainder of the hike, but from this point on only a small fraction of those that we saw in the meadows. We spotted some marmots chowing down on grasses and run-slide-hop fleeing over the snow slopes as we approached. We would never get a view of Mt Rainier towering above us, but did have excellent views of the minaret peaks of the Tatoosh Range to the south, including Unicorn Peak, The Castle, Pinnacle Peak, and Plummer Peak.
Soon we reached the snow-covered western outwash basin of the Paradise Glaciers where I request a short detour off the trail to investigate a meltwater cave system that seems to seasonally develop. A further 0.75 miles to the north off-trail was the site of the Paradise Glacier Caves, a remarkable terminus cave system that had been mapped to over 13 kilometers in length in 1978 and now does not exist at all due to glacial recession. I would have to settle for a couple meltwater cave throughtrips about a hundred feet in length each. The scalloped melting patterns of the walls and ceilings, and constant dripping were mesmerizing, which is to say nothing of the multicolored splotches of ice from algae and the filtering of light. The top cave had a double falls with arch that was also quite cool to see. This little detour was probably my favorite part of the hike. After snapping many a photo I returned to Heather and we continued on, the trail now climbing more steeply up slopes and benches, giving nice views of the interesting dendritic melting patterns below. We saw a few people once we regained the paved portion of the trail near the visitor center, but nothing like the mayhem of earlier in the day.
We continued to follow the well-trodden snow up a ridge and then a traverse across a don't-slip slope. We gained the top part of the trail in near-whiteout conditions, having a quick snack and drink before continuing downhill. Between the poor visibility, frigid cold, and anastomosing trail this felt like the wildest part of the hike. We were prepared for the conditions but it was shocking the number of people we ran into in shorts and sneakers feeling their way along. We managed to bypass Panorama Point and instead beeline down a steep snowfield to regain the trail below us. After one more semi-glissade near Glacier Vista, the terrain became less steep and we started to enjoy pockets of life with marmots and wildflowers. The further we descended the more we dropped out underneath the clouds, temperatures warming and views of the Totoosh Range reappearing, glazed in low angle light. A new peak, Tumtum Peak, appeared as an oddly conical shape on the horizon.
We heard then spotted a sooty grouse just before the parking lot, then a deer enjoying the empty lot as we packed up. Altogether the hike took us about 4.5 hours to go 6 miles between the conditions and leisure. We returned the way we came back out the Stevens Canyon entrance then drove north through deepening dusk to find a spot to free-camp at the Ranger Creek airstrip, all in all nicer than I expected. This ended up being our longest day of the trip and it was somewhere around 10pm when we finally ate our freeze-dried dinners. Despite the late night the plan was for an early start to make sure we got into the White River entrance on Rainier's northeast side before the timed entry reservations kick in at 7am. With a quick pack-up in the morning we entered the park and were soon greeted by a roadblock announcing our destination of Sunrise Road was still closed for the season (later I would find out it opened July 4th, the next day!). This shifted our plans considerably, and after contemplating the 6mi/+2000ft round trip just to get to the roadend overlook, we instead opted for a mellow short hike onto the moraine of the Emmons Glacier. The day was crisp and clear so we got great views of Mt Rainier's northeast face including nearly the full extent of the Emmons Glacier, Little Tahoma Peak, and Fryingpan Glacier. It would have been a much better day to have hiked the Skyline Trail and have seen the south side!
With that teaser hike in the books, we decided it was time to continue our drive, on through the mountains to the town of Enumclaw where we got groceries and used cellular reception to plan our next move. We decided to snag two nights of backcountry camping up the Hoh River Valley with the hopes of missing most of the mayhem and camping challenges surrounding the 4th of July. This left the matter of trying to find camping tonight, close enough to our destination, the day before a major holiday which had me worried. Most of the first-come first-served campgrounds I knew of were small with 6-12 spaces. With an aspirational plan in place, we now drove through the capital of Olympia and onto painfully trafficked roads leading to the southwest coast of the Olympic Peninsula (much of the worst of it tackled by Heather driving). As we began to near Olympic National Park, Heather correctly suggested we might want to look at some campgrounds for availability near Lake Quinault, to gauge how grim our scenario would be. A mile and a half off the 101 we pulled into Willaby Creek Campground, which was ominously full but suggested trying other campgrounds. We drove through the five building main street of Quinault, then pulled into Falls Creek Campground. Here a friendly camphost abruptly greeted us, pointed out three sites remaining, and suggested the best one for us. We immediately claimed it and less than a half hour later the campground was fully booked. We got really lucky with this one! It was a stunning lakefront site and I could park our vehicle for a superb tent window view of the lake. Once claimed, we drove up a wildly overgrown forest road to a forgotten trailhead and took a short leg-stretching walk through the forest to Gatton Creek Falls. We then had a look inside Lake Quinault Lodge (fancy!). We were tempted to sit for a beer or expensive meal on their scenic deck overlooking the lake to treat ourselves after days of frugality, but opted for tasty quesadillas and cheaper drinks on our site's pebble beach as we watched kayakers and paddleboarders lazily plying the calm waters. I think we made the right choice on that one. It was probably the nicest campground site we had on the trip and it felt like a small victory snagging it.
It was a day almost as long as our previous one. Heather and I were both impressed at the immensity of Mt Rainier; it was a park both of us were interested in returning to see more of after a couple quick tastes. The plan was to get an early start the following day, the 4th of July, to get into the Hoh Rainforest entrance station to Olympic National Park before the holiday crowds to begin our backpack trip (foreshadowing...).
No comments:
Post a Comment