Hiking in Paradise

On Saturday, we finally made our way down to Mount Rainier, the mountain in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, there are many mountains in this area, but this one really dominates the vistas. We weren't really planning this trip, but when we woke up and Ari realized his afternoon plans were canceled, we quickly packed up and headed out the door. We weren't prepared for the 3 hour drive to get there (it looks so big from and close to Seattle) or the difficulty adjusting to the altitude, but did end up enjoying ourselves eventually. We spent our time in the area called Paradise--just about rightly so, I'd say. Here are some pictures for you to judge for yourself.


We were about 5500 feet up, though no where near the top at over 14,000 feet. The snow line was at about 7000 feet, though there were a good handful of pockets of snow at our level on a warm, sunny August day. One of the guides told us that the snow had only just mostly melted a few weeks ago. We read in Sam's book about Washington state, that Mount Rainier is the snowiest place in the world, out of places that measure snow! Sam threw a few snowballs, saw a few waterfalls, saw a glacier, stopped to smell the wild mountain flowers, and made a friend. While it admittedly took us a bit to warm up, Sam's opinion went from "this is NOT the greatest trip ever" to "this was a really good idea you had, Daddy." All told, we were on the mountain about 6 hours which included a much needed lunch break at the Paradise Inn.

You can see many more pictures from our day at Mount Rainier on my flickr site here.