October 4, 2015 Mt Rainier National Park, Washington

Another sunny and high 60’s day. No wind today.

First light on the smoke in the trees. We went up to Paradise to hike the Nisqually view trail. It is closed during the week-they are paving it! Here are dead branches and red foliage.

 

John taking a photo of his feet with the glaciers. . . This time of year the glaciers are real dirty, as cool as it is to see them, they look better from a distance. I guess in a normal year the mountain looks more like a snow ball than a rock like it does this year in the drought. This area is the most popular part  in the park, there are hordes of people –most who don’t speak English hiking, most of the trails are paved. In the summer these meadows are fields of wild flowers. Pretty stuff to see and it is nice to see people enjoying the National parks, but not exactly a wilderness experience.

A waterfall in the glaciers. All of the dirty stuff around it is glacier. At lunch this ballsy fat  chipmunk got right on John’s pack trying to steal food. John poured water on it to make it go away, and it didn’t faze it.

John on one of the non main trails coming down from the glacier views. Our next stop was Box Canyon. This is the Muddy Fork of the Cowlitz river. The water is 180 feet below us on the bridge. The canyon is about 15 feet wide. John looked it up, people boat this, it is a class V. Way above my skill level, but very pretty.

 

Closer ups of the Box Canyon from another bridge on the trail up the canyon.  I am standing on a rock polished by glacial ice. Stevens Canyon which this runs into was all carved by a glacier. Very deep canyon, but wider than this.

 

The Grove of the Patriarchs trail is through a small area of old growth forest where the trees are 1000 years old and up to 200 feet high. They were 500 years old when Columbus discovered the new world. The whole pacific northwest was covered with them before the loggers came. John is lifting a log from across the trail so I can get by. There is this cool very mobile suspension bridge over the Ohanapecosh river. You kind of bounce your way across it. Really unnerving if someone else is walking too.

The trees are huge. Very majestic. Lovely trail. John is in the photos so you can tell how big these really are. This big one sucked him in.

  

Very tall tree.  A dragon fly, the roots of a huge tree that fell over-the roots about 20 feet wide-and hollow inside, mushrooms that look like cinnamon was sprinkled over them, red vine maple leaves, a burl on a downed tree and a monument to the 10th mountain division. They trained at Paradise on Mt Rainier and at Camp Hall in Colorado in skiing and mountaineering  during the winter of 1941-42. They skied into Italy and took Riva Ridge helping the end of world war II in 1945.

The Wonderland Trail goes all the way around Mt Rainier. 93 miles long. Bet that would be a fantastic backpack.