I decided to start a blog because I want to remember all of the awesome adventures that Chase and I go on together. After 8 years together, we've already been on quite a few. Hopefully I find sometime to backdate some of them. I'm calling this post "minimoon" because we just got married last week. I have to admit though, I totally stole the idea from my good friend Marissa who got married back in May and visited Northern California this past weekend and posted #minimoon on an Instrgram photo. I had to steal it. Thanks Marissa! I also have to confess that the idea to use a blog to remember adventures was stolen as well. My sister-in-law has a family blog and I read it everyday. I love feeling like I know what my nieces and family are up to everyday even though I'm so far away!
Chase came up with the name for our blog (he's a clever guy). Chase is also a great writer (much better than me), so hopefully he'll write some on here too! Probably when we go to sporting events and such. I will warn you that my posts will probably be quite long. I'll only do one post per adventure and I love to take pictures! I took over 250 this weekend, so narrowing them down to a select few for the blog is going to be impossible! I hope you enjoy!
Our first view of Mt. Rainier
After the stress of the wedding and traveling, we needed to get out and relax. We wanted something cheap after all the wedding spending and since we hadn't been to Mt. Rainier yet, it seemed perfect. The drive to Mt. Rainier is about 2.5 hours from Richland. Most of the drive is through desert-like terrain. We have to drive through Yakima. Chase had just driven through Yakima a few days earlier on his way to Seattle to meet up with his friend Brad. All through the Yakima Valley he was insisting that I could see Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier. I couldn't see either! I guess it was too cloudy in the mountains. The whole weekend had a large chance of thunderstorms. It wasn't until we were well into the Cascades that we turned around a bend to see the gorgeous view above. It was breathtaking. I haven't spent a lot of time in the mountains, so this trip was a whole new experience for me!
Since I didn't take Friday off work, we didn't arrive to the park until around 8 PM. Mt. Rainier gets an average of 680 in of snow a year, thus the park is only really open in the summer. Because of this, its extremely hard to get camping reservations. Luckily for us, they save 25% of the sites for the "first-come-first-serve" crowd. The closest campground to the southeast entrance, Ohanapecosh Campground, said it was full. I knew that there was a high chance of thunderstorms the whole weekend, so I gambled that people with reservations didn't show up. I was right. We drove in to the campground and occupied site A2. Yep, the second spot in the 190 site campground was empty and available for first-come-first-serve, despite the "full" sign. Our campsite rocked! We were experienced the most intense thunderstorm I have ever seen while laying in our tent. It was a bit scary, but I was soothed by knowing that there were 100 ft trees surrounding me. Surely they would get hit by lightening before we did. The cloudy, yet bright sky made for some difficult photography. I did my best.
Our campsite at Ohanapecosh Campground
We woke up with the sun and ventured farther into the park. Our first stop was Pinnacle Peak. We didn't even make it to Pinnacle Peak though before the picture escapade started. The trailhead was located at Refection Lake. The picture Chase took on his phone says it all.
Reflection Lake
Pinnacle Peak has an elevation of 6562 ft and the trail along the peak ascends nearly to the top of the peak. My highest hike yet (Chase is a pro, he's done the Maroon Bells in Colorado)! The trail was actually really short. Only 1.3 miles to the top, although the elevation gain was over 1000 ft in that mileage. The whole ascent to the top had wonderful views of Mt. Rainier. There are streams of water everywhere around the park and on the trails. Its all run off from the peaks which are snow covered most of the year. I read in the newsletter that on June 1st, Paradise (the part of the park we visited) still had 15 feet of snow. Crazy.
We also saw quite a few marmots along the way. This one was up on the mountain side eating the wildflowers!
When we got to the top of the pass, a saddle point between Plummer's Peak and Pinnacle Peak, we were welcomed by a gorgeous view of Mt. Adams! The combination of the wildflower meadow around us, the valley of pine trees below and the view of Mt. Adams in the distance made for a beautiful view. We sat on the side of the mountain looking around for quite some time! We were supposed to be able to see Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens as well, but we couldn't really identify them. I think we saw Mt. Hood, it has a very pointy peak, but there were a few pointy peaks in the distance that could have been it. I don't think we saw Mt. Saint Helens at all.
There were signs indicating the end of the maintained trail. They urged us to be careful and not to disturb the wildlife if we continued to hike. We didn't climb up to the very top of the summit because it would have been dangerous without climbing equipment. We did venture along the ridge that you see behind Chase and myself in the pictures above. Luckily we didn't have to worry too much about disturbing the meadows because enough people had ventured farther that there was a pretty clear path. The wildlife came out onto the trail! So I got some cool pictures. The marmot below was on the trail. It was huge! I was a bit afraid to pass it. I didn't want to startle it and end up getting bit, so instead of trying to get past it right away, the marmot and I had a little photo shoot. I think it turned out pretty well. The marmot was quite photogenic!
I finally caught up with Chase, who was admiring the slushy snow. There was a lot of snow still around the mountain despite the fact that this side of the mountain had been in full sun for probably about 4-5 hours by now. That really tells you how much snow they get in the Cascades! Trail reviews of the Pinnacle Peak trail from the middle of July said that the whole top part of the trail was snow covered and quite slippery. Luckily the snow on the trail had melted by the time we visited so we got to enjoy it! We got pretty good at using the timer on the camera by the end of our trip. I love the picture of us with Mt. Rainier in the background!
On the way back down, Chase had to feel the water in all of the streams crossing the trail. The overall consensus was that it was very cold. It is primarily made up of snowmelt, so it wasn't really surprising.
The picture below is of the Paradise Visitor Center and Inn. Paradise is just an area of the park. There are a bunch of trails that give you a pretty close up view of the glaciers on the mountain. We were heading there next, so I had to get a picture. I saw a picture in the newsletter later that show the visitor center in the winter. You could barely see the gables of the roof. It was completely covered with snow. No wonder this park basically closes down in the winter. They got 748 in of snow last winter. That is insane.
Once we made it down from Pinnacle Peak, we headed toward the Paradise visitor center. We still needed to get a permit for backcountry camping that night. The online reservation system was quite confusing. Of course all of the reservable sites were taken anyway, but it said they saved 25 % of the sites for first-come-first-serve just like the large campgrounds do. I was still nervous that we wouldn't be able to find something. Since Mt. Rainier is very accessible all year round, July and August are extremely popular months to visit! This was instantly evident when we showed up to the visitor center and could barely get a parking spot. There were tons of people everywhere. We thought that we would be doing more backcountry hiking, you know in peace and quiet. Well we picked the most popular spot to visit. I guess we should have investigated more. But it was worth it anyway. We took the Skyline trail up to Panorama Point (6800 ft elevation). It was an extremely busy trail, but we still enjoyed it.
There was snow on some parts of the trail. In fact, we had to go a different way back down because the shorter trail was covered in snow and ice still and was quite dangerous according to the volunteer we ran into. I'm glad we ran into him! I wouldn't have wanted to trek across the slippery snow! We weren't prepared for that. The pictures below make you feel like your so close to the top of the peak. In reality we weren't even half way to the top elevation wise. We only got up to 6800 ft and the peak is over 14000 ft in elevation.
Snow on the trail and a zoom in of some of the glacier on Mt. Rainier. I'm not sure what the name of this glacier was.
The highest point that "normal" hikers can go to is Camp Muir at 10000 ft. Beyond that special permits and ice climbing certification is required. In the picture below hikers are heading up to Camp Muir! We talked to a nice volunteer ranger. He was 72 and had just hiked up to Camp Muir last year. It said its really tough with the steepness, snow and elevation gain. He encouraged us to do it though. Haha. I'm not sure I'm really ready for that. You have to have some snow gear to get up there. You should also probably have some training on how to stop yourself if you slide in the snow. The second picture is actually a group of military medics that were learning to slide down the mountain and stop themselves as a training. Pretty cool and scary at the same time. I'm not sure I want to hike to Camp Muir quite yet. Chase is totally on board of course. Maybe next summer.
We got really lucky with our timing. The clouds started to roll in fast once we started hiking around Paradise. In the picture below, Pinnacle Peak (the two peaks in the left half of the picture) is almost covered by clouds! I bet we wouldn't have seen Mt. Adams from the saddle point if we were up there in the afternoon.
I love the picture above. Clouds, wildflowers and mountains. The pictures below are from Panorama Point. Lots of snow up that high!
On our hike down the mountain, we were getting really hungry. We had brought our Jetboil (camp stove) in our day pack and some food to cook for lunch. But the trail was so busy that there wasn't a place to stop and cook per say. So we had only had a granola bar while we were on the trail. It was around 3:00 PM by then, so we were starving. Because of this, we took a short cut down (Golden Gate Trail) and it ended up being gorgeous! So many meadows with wild flowers. The most we had seen so far. It was a really nice hike down and it cut a mile off of our route!
One of the larger waterfalls trickling all the way from the top of the mountain! We also saw a very large deer laying in the trees very close to the lodge and visitors center. It was the only one we saw the whole trip, so I am a little worried it was hurt or something. It was laying in a very odd place.
After our adventure at Paradise, both the gorgeous awesome hike and dealing with all of the people, we were ready to get out of the crowds and into the peaceful forest. We drove quite a was back East in the park to get to the trailhead for our campsite. We were supposed to park at Box Canyon Trailhead. We got there, parked and I even ran over to the trailhead sign to make sure that it said "Nickel Creek Camp 1.7 miles" on the mileage sign. We quickly cooked some lunch, because we could hear the thunder rolling in fast. After lunch we packed up our packs and headed out on the trail. This awesome waterfall that we were able to get really close to was about 0.5 miles into the trail.
After we explored the waterfall for a bit, we continued on and came to another junction in the trail. We were expecting that it was say Nickel Creek Camp about 1 mile since we had come about 0.7 miles already. Nope. It sure didn't. It said Nickel Creek Camp 2.4 miles. How in the world was the camp farther now? We were so confused. We assumed maybe the sign was wrong and kept moving in the right direction according to the sign. I should note that we didn't have a very good detailed map of the area, only the larger one of the entire park. Long story short, there are TWO Box Canyon Trailheads. Why two named the same thing? I have no idea. Terrible idea. We ended up hiking around 4 miles to get to the camp when really we should have only had to hike 0.8 miles. And it would have been nice to only hike the 0.8 because it was all up hill. At least it made for an easy exit in the morning! We finally made it to our campsite in the rain. Luckily it wasn't raining too hard so we got our tent set up just fine and cooked some dinner. There are black bears in the park, so we had to hang our food on a bear pole. I should have taken a picture, but once it started raining so hard, I didn't really get the camera out again. Our campsite was pretty sweet! Lots of trees to protect from the storm, nice flat area to put the tent out, etc. The best part about camping this past weekend was our new chairs from my graduate advisor Connie and her husband Atti. They are AWESOME. So comfortable and extremely light weight for backpacking.
The next morning, we hiked out of the woods before we could even have a granola bar. We were in a hurry to get home and get some stuff done around the house. The photos below are from our last sightseeing stop at Box Canyon. As the picture indicates, the water is 115 feet below where we were standing. The real impressive part was the roaring of the water. It was rushing so fast and scary! Chase had to drop a stick down to see how long it took to hit the rushing water.
Our trip to Mt. Rainier for our "minimoon" was amazing. We ended the lovely weekend of hiking and camping with an awesome breakfast in Yakima on the way home. The restaurant was pretty good. It was a little cafe. We'll probably hit up this place whenever we go back through Yakima after camping. I hope your enjoyed reading about our trip! I think our next trip is going to be to Mt. Hood in Oregon. We haven't been to Oregon yet and we live like 20 minutes from the state line!
