Category: Mt. Rainier

I’ve reached the point where I find it hard to get aerobic exercise walking around the gym track and, unfortunately, my knees are not up to jogging anymore. Sometimes if I shuffle a lap I can get my heart rate up and keep it elevated for another few laps, but I’m lucky if I get 10 or 15 minutes of aerobic exercise in an hour-and-a-half workout.   On the other hand, my heart rate goes straight up whenever I hike in Mount Rainier National Park because there aren’t many hikes that don’t require uphill climbs.  I often earn two or three hours of aerobic exercise a day there.  

Though this is strenuous exercise, it never feels that way (at least until I start driving home or try to get up from the couch later in the evening).  The beautiful Avalanche Lilies lining the Mt. Rainier High Lakes Trail in July always make me forget that I am struggling to keep up with Leslie and Paul, and, perhaps more importantly, give me an excuse to stop and catch my breath.          

Truthfully, fields of Avalanche Lilies early in the season would be enough to inspire me to walk around Reflection Lake early in the season, but Indian paintbrush, Bear Paw, and others soon convince me that my elevated heart rate is due to my love of these flowers —not a lack of oxygen.

Even though I may have prettier Indian Paintbrush growing in my backyard, I always brake for a closer look when I see them in the mountains, where they truly belong.  

If I get jaded with flowers, I can always look across the valley at Pinnacle Peak, a hike that awaited us later in the hiking season.

Although this is a regular hike for us, it’s the first time we have ever seen a bear on the trail.  Leslie spotted this young black bear just as we were sitting down for lunch.   Luckily, he wasn’t as close as my telephoto lens made him appear and only seemed interested in berries, not other sources of food.

Despite his total disinterest in us, we decided to forego lunch and continue our hike because he seemed to be traveling in the same direction we were. I didn’t want to meet him on the narrow trail back down to the car, especially since I had recently viewed a video of another hiker’s encounter with a bear which followed the hiker for a considerable distance before exiting the trail.  

Still, it was the highlight of our hike, and the adrenaline rush made it a quicker and easier hike than usual to get back to the car.

We try to plan our summer hikes so that we begin with the easiest hikes and end with the toughest ones.  Luckily, the hike around Reflection Lake is both one of the easiest hikes we do and a personal favorite so it’s a great way to kick off the hiking season.

On July 28,  2013, Leslie and I hiked Mt. Rainier with her friend Hao from China. I was so exhausted from keeping up with them on that hike that I resolved to lose 30 pounds so that I could continue to hike the Cascades.  I lost that weight by changing my diet and have continued to lose weight, but a recent snowshoeing trip on Rainier convinced me that I’ve lost too much muscle and need to rebuild it, even if it means gaining some weight.  

We bought new snowshoes for Christmas and new all-weather tires for the RAV-4, and that has been enough to get us to snowshoe once a week for the last five weeks.  One of our first treks was from Narada Falls to Reflection Lake, well, if we had actually gotten to Reflection Lake.  

This was also our first snowshoes on Mt. Rainier several years ago, so I thought it would be doable, and with considerable huffing-and-puffing on my part, we did make it to the highway that serves as a snowshoe trail in the winter.

Unfortunately, the usual trail/highway was closed because of high avalanche danger.  We would have to add another mile and several hundred feet elevation gain to make it to the lake using the detour route.  I had to tell Leslie and Paul I wasn’t up to doing it and that it was time to turn back.  I had to settle for this shot of Mt. Rainier.

Not being able to make it to our intended destination really frustrated me.  I knew that I had lost a lot of muscle since we had quit going to the YMCA during the Covid 19 quarantine, but I didn’t realize how much it had affected me until this trip.  Luckily, we also rejoined the YMCA in January, so I started walking further and hitting the rowing machine and weight machines harder. The gate was closed at Longmire on our next trip, so we ended up doing a snowshoe at a lower altitude, and I didn’t have any problems on that trip.

On our fourth week we attempted the Narada Falls/Reflection Trek again.  This time I wore lighter boots and left my camera gear, except for my iPhone, home.  We realized that the road was open to the lake when we saw other skiers coming from the other side.

The view at the â€?”lake” was a little disappointing because there was nothing but a big snowfield, but I was elated that I had actually made it there without feeling totally exhausted.  

This shot of Pinnacle Peak and The Castle across from the lake made the trip worthwhile,  

and this view of Rainier on our way back was the frosting on the cakes, so to speak.

If you need to train hard, I can’t imagine a better place to do it than around Mt. Rainier.  Once you’ve caught your breath and straightened back up, the surrounding beauty makes you forget the pain of overexertion.  

For our last hike of the season near Mt. Rainier we moved north, starting from the Crystal Mountain ski area.  Our trip started a little rugged because we had trouble finding the beginning of the trail and ended up climbing straight uphill on a gravel road.  As it turned out, that was an indicator of what the hike was going to be like.  

The best part of the hike was that it was quite strenuous, providing a fitting challenge for an end-of-the-season hike.  I think Leslie and Paul liked it better than I did, but I was off-put by the clearings for ski trails that we had to cross and the sight of a scalped mountain across the valley.  Still, there was a couple of pleasant small streams crossing the trail.

Lake Henskin, where we ate lunch, was also quite peaceful.  It felt great to cool off after the steep climb up the trail.

Unfortunately, the silence was shattered by the sound of a helicopter flying overhead repeatedly.

At first, I speculated that it might be involved in fighting the fires that plagued the Pacific Northwest and most of the West Coast this summer, but once it flew directly overhead I knew that wasn’t why it was here.  It wasn’t until I got home and put the image up on the screen that it became obvious this was some sort of gun-ship practicing.  

I’m not up on the latest weapons since it has been 40+ years since I was in a military helicopter, but that is definitely a gunner with some sort of machine gun peering down on us, and there’s another machine gun on the back of the helicopter.  I suspect the opposite side was equally armed.

Luckily, the helicopter’s intrusion into the silence was soon forgotten as we descended back down the trail and immersed ourselves in the comforting protection of the old-growth forest.

On September 9th we hiked to Sourdough Gap on the East side of Mt Rainier. We had hiked to Sheep Lake on a previous hike but thought we had better train a little more before trying to reach Sourdough. This time we only paused at Sheep Lake long enough to get a couple of pictures

and headed out for the pass, another 1.4 miles up the trail and quite a bit higher, as attested to by the photo I took of the same lake near the top of our hike.

The trail beyond Sheep Lake offers views of rugged country, the trail itself is never too steep, just a steady climb to the top.  It taxed the three older members of the group but didn’t seem to slow Kylan down at all.

Unfortunately, the smoke from wildfires on the east side prevented us from seeing as far as advertised in some hiking guides, but we got a good view of the PCT as it headed down and then back up a distant ridge to the North. 

Surprisingly, we encountered twelve or thirteen PCT hikers near Sourdough Gap, and all but two were women, most apparently hiking alone. I was both amazed and impressed at that. This young woman was one of the first we met and talked to.  She used the rest to call her boyfriend and let him know where she was on her trek.

 Despite all the years I’ve hiked portions of the PCT, I had only met one other hiker who was attempting to complete the entire trail in a single year. I was also surprised that most of the hikers were hiking solo; I’ve only backpacked by myself one or two times.  

Even more amazing was how light their packs looked; gear has changed radically since I started hiking and backpacking.  Of course, my first backpack was made of wood and canvas and was extremely uncomfortable, nearly as uncomfortable as the cement-like boots that they told me I needed to wear if I was carrying a pack.

If I was sixty years younger,  I would be sorely tempted to hike the PCT from Mexico to Canada.  Since that’s not going to happen, I’ll keep hiking short stretches of the PCT and enjoying the 

beautiful scenery, like this Fall foliage.