Mount Rainier National Park

After several years on the road, Cheryl had almost caught up to me on our checklist of visited U.S. National Parks. The only one that I had been to, but she hadn’t, was Mount Rainier in Washington State. So we were both looking forward to finally checking off our 58th National Park.

Mount Rainier National Park covers an enormous area, and there are no roads across the park because of, well, that big mountain (14,410 feet / 4,392 meters tall) that sits in the middle of it. As a result, we spent quite a bit of time driving from point to point. We were staying near the White River entrance, on the east side of the park, so we made that our first stop.

As we drove up the Sunrise Road from White River, we passed this outcropping of columnar rock formations called andesite near the road. During the last ice age, the White River Valley was filled with glacial ice a thousand feet thick. When Mount Rainier erupted, lava flowing from the volcano met the ice. Unable to melt through the thick glacier, the lava flowed along its side and against a ridge. The lava then hardened into rock, taking on these signature hexagonal forms as it cooled. The rate of cooling determines the thickness of the columns. These smaller columns formed when the lava cooled quickly against glacial ice. Larger columns form when lava cools more slowly.

Further up the road, a hairpin turn brought us to Sunrise Point, where we were able to get out of the truck and get a good look at the mountain. Mount Rainier looks so enormous because it rises more than 10,000 feet / 3,000 meters above the surrounding terrain–so you see much more of its bulk.

Just a bit further up the road, we reached the Sunrise Visitor Center, which at 6,400 feet / 1,950 meters is the highest point accessible by vehicle in Mount Rainier National Park. From here, we walked a short trail to two different overlooks with great views of the Emmons Glacier.

Mount Rainier has the largest number of glaciers on a single peak anywhere in the contiguous United States. The numbers are staggering: almost 10% of the park is covered by the mountain’s 25 glaciers, which occupy a combined area of 34 square miles and contain one cubic mile of permanent snow and ice!

Emmons Glacier alone has a surface area of 4.3 square miles, giving it the largest area of any single glacier in the contiguous United States. Only some of the glaciers in Alaska are larger.

Emmons Glacier actually continues well below the lowest obviously ice-covered area on the eastern slope of Rainier. You can see the terminus of the glacier in the photo below, where the ice forms a cave-like structure with a meltwater stream flowing from it. This entire section of Emmons Glacier is almost hidden beneath rocks and debris from a 1963 rockfall from Little Tahoma Peak above it. The debris now helps to insulate the glacier from melting as quickly as it otherwise would.

After enjoying a picnic lunch back at Sunrise Point, we drove back down the White River Valley to the Tipsoo Lake area of the park. Several people had told us about the Naches Peak Loop Trail that starts here, saying it was one of the most beautiful walks at Mount Rainier. The view of the mountain with Tipsoo Lake in the foreground was stunning indeed.

After a short distance, it was quickly apparent that the Naches Peak Loop Trail was going to earn its “moderate” rating. So while I (David) pressed forward on the 3.5 mile loop trail, Cheryl elected to spend more time exploring the area around Tipsoo Lake.

The trail climbed through a field of wildflowers. The colors were past their peak, but still lovely.

About half of the Naches Peak Loop Trail is along a section of the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest trail, which runs along the Pacific mountain ranges from the Mexican border in California to the Canadian border in Washington.

As the trail circled around Naches Peak, I spotted a small herd of mountain goats grazing up on the rocky hillside. They were quite far away, but I was able to see them clearly through the binoculars that, for once, I’d remembered to bring with me. I had to zoom my iPhone camera in to about 10x so the photo isn’t especially clear, but they’re there!

I saw plenty of other wildlife on the Naches Peak Loop Trail, including this inquisitive little squirrel who watched me from a nearby boulder, probably hoping for a handout.

And later on, the cooing of a sooty grouse caught my ear as he stood on the path ahead of me. Surprisingly, he stood his ground until I was quite close, then quickly ran past me just off the trail, where he joined his mate in the forest. They were probably protecting a nest that I couldn’t see.

The trail took me past this pretty little alpine pond.

As I came around the back side of Naches Peak, I could see Big Dewey Lake below me…

…and then just a few moments later, “The Mountain” came back into view.

The Naches Peak Loop Trail took a couple of hours, with almost 700 feet of elevation gain, but the views were well worth the effort!

The next day, we drove about 90 minutes to the south entrance of Mount Rainier National Park and the Paradise corridor area. We had planned to hike the 1.6 mile Nisqually Vista Trail for some up-close views of the glaciers on the south side of The Mountain. After we arrived at Paradise we learned that a ranger-guided walk on that trail was about to depart, so we quickly ate the sandwiches we’d brought with us and then met up with Ranger Gio for an informative walk-and-talk.

The Nisqually View Trail got us much closer to the Nisqually Glacier than we’d been to the Emmons Glacier the day before. The darker gray “wall” at the right center of the photo is the toe of the glacier. The terminus of the glacier–which begins up at the summit of Rainier–has both thinned and retreated to a mere fraction of the size it once was, but the wide and deep valley in which it sits is evidence of Nisqually’s former glory: at one time, the Nisqually Glacier filled this valley all the way past where we were standing and up to the tops of the lateral moraines on either side of it. That was a lot of ice!

Ranger Gio showed us photos that illustrated the retreat of the Nisqually Glacier over the last several decades.

The squiggly yellow lines showed the extent of the glacier in 1966 and how much it had shrunk and retreated up the mountain by 2014–primarily due to the warming effects of climate change.

Throughout our walk on the Nisqually View Trail, we nibbled on wild blueberries and huckleberries that were growing plentifully on the bushes alongside the trail.

After our hike, we took a short drive to 168-foot-high Narada Falls, where the Paradise River plunges over the edge of a relatively recent flow of hard andesite lava that abuts much older rock. We decided not to walk to the viewpoint at the bottom of the falls, though–we’ve seen so many beautiful waterfalls in the last few years that we’ve gotten a bit jaded!

As we prepared to depart our campsite the next morning, the smoke and the smell of burning wood from the recently-ignited Wildcat Fire just to our south, almost directly east of The Mountain, filled the air and obscured our view of all the mountains in the area.

As of September 16, more than two weeks after we left Mount Rainier, the Wildcat Fire had grown to encompass almost 8,600 acres and was still only 8% contained. Danger from the wildfire led to the closure of the Naches Peak Loop Trail, among others. So we’re doubly glad that we got to see Mount Rainier from top to bottom while we were there!