CBD's Big Adventure: Mount Rainier

We left Portland and drove north into the state of Washington heading towards Mount Rainier National Park. We didn’t have a place to stay yet and it was Saturday night. We stopped at the ranger station to get some advice. One of the options was down a forest road in a national forest and the fee was $0. The location was good so we drove to check it out. It turned out to be a great campground next to a mountain river (Summit Creek) and it was in fact free. Free. Brilliant. The neighbors on one side were a couple where both the boy and the girl wore wrap-around skirts. And on the other side was a rowdy crew of busch light drinkers shooting pellet guns. But they didn’t bother us. Other than the campsite, Mount Rainier was a bust.

We have a great book of trails that aunt kate gave us for Washington. In this book, one of the specifications is what time of year the trail would be open. Many of the trails around Mount Rainier said July-Sept or mid-July-September. On Sunday morning we got up and went into the park to try one of the trails that was listed as Mid-July. We were a bit concerned that the portion of the trail visible from the trailhead was completely snowed under, but when a lovely family of 5 pulled up next to us, geared up and headed out on the trail we decided we would give it a try. We followed this crew up the mountain and it was hard work. The snow was deep, slick, wet and most of it was set at about a 30 degree pitch. At one point, Christine lost her footing and ended up on her ass sliding about 50 feet to where the ground leveled off. This was cute but about a ¼ mile on, the snow covered ground was at a steep angle and the downhill eventuality wasn’t as friendly. We had a bit of a melt-down. No tears, but close. And it was potentially dangerous. So, we watched this lovely family disappear over the ridge and turned back. It was hard work for all three of us.

Sunday afternoon we were exhausted from the morning and walked to a waterfall. Then Monday morning we packed up and headed back into the park (we did see some massive big-horned sheep early in the morning) to cover some trails close to the visitors center. Apparently, it was a late, rough winter at Mount Rainier. The visitor center was newly emerged from a snow-bank. And the trails we attempted were also still snowed under. We walked a couple hundred yards over the snow and decided to come back another time. We set out towards the Olympic peninsula around noon. We are hopeful that another couple weeks will make a difference in snow-melt for our stop at Glacier.