Today was forecast to be our last sunny day in Mt. Rainier before the weekend rains hit. After much deliberation, we decided to skip sunrise, get up at 7:00, and go to the Sunrise section of Mt. Rainier. Our campground, Paradise, and most of our favorite places are on the south side of Mt. Rainier. Sunrise is on the northeast side of the mountain.
We were on the road by 7:30, but only made it as far as Reflection Lake before we stopped to shoot Mt. Rainier reflections in the lake. I don't know how many shots is enough, but it's very hard not to stop.
We dropped down into Stevens Canyon and retraced our drive from yesterday. We even remembered to stop at Fall Creek Falls, the waterfall we missed yesterday afternoon. The low volume of water and the two-tier waterfall provided lots of potential for good images. The problem was that the top tier was lit, but the bottom section was in deep shade. We need to shoot it again on an overcast day.
We climbed out of Stevens Canyon, crossed the ridge, and dropped into the White River Canyon. Then, it was a steady climb to Sunrise Point and the amazing view to Mt. Adams to the north, Mt. Rainier to the west, and the Tatoosh Range to the south. While we were there, we discovered we had cell service. Carol called home to get our messages and discovered Syl was in the hospital. That triggered a round of phone calls to try to find out where she was and how she was doing. Once we had a plan for getting on-going updates, we continued up to Sunrise. As soon as we left Sunrise Point, wildflowers dotted the hillsides next to the road.
Sunshine
Our plan was
to hike down to the Emmons Glacier Vista and then follow the trail to Shadow Lake.
But our parking place was so close to the Visitor Center, that we ended up
on a service road "trail" to Shadow Lake instead of doubling back to Emmons Glacier Vista.
Shadow Lake
had much more water than we've seen in the past, and was a pretty sub-alpine lake
instead of an overgrown mud hole. Shadow Lake is also where we became lunch for several thousand mosquitoes.
It's been many years since I was that miserable hiking. Any time we even paused, we were covered in mosquitoes.
We brought our lunches to eat along the trail, but we didn't dare stop long enough to eat. Instead of eating lunch, we would have been lunch.
After Shadow Lake, we returned to Sunrise on the trail along the edge of the White River Canyon that we had missed to start the hike. It was a wide and well-maintained trail that provided amazing views of Emmons Glacier and Mt. Rainier. Wildflowers lined the trail all the way back to Sunrise. We missed the bear and her two cubs along the trail. Evidently, we had passed about 10 minutes too soon.
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| False Hellebore | Emmons glacier | Lupine |
We finally ate our lunches in the parking lot near the Visitor Center. As a reward for our hike, we bought ice cream at the gift shop.
Sunbeam Falls
On our way back to camp, we stopped at Sunbeam Creek to shoot Sunbeam Falls. One of the amazing things about Mt. Rainier is all the waterfalls along the roads.
Much of the topography is extremely steep mountainsides, so streams flowing down the mountains leap off cliffs or cascade over series after series of rock steps.
You would be hard pressed to find a slow-flowing stream in Mt. Rainier outside of the main canyon bottoms. Waterfalls and cascades are so commonplace
at Mt. Rainier that they are largely overlooked. So far, Sunbeam is our favorite waterfall of the trip.
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When we returned to the motorhome, we discovered the cloudy skies had prevented our solar cells from storing any energy in our batteries. And since we only had 15 minutes to run the generator before it was forbidden, we are spending an evening by flashlight and headlamp light. It has been quite interesting. With the rain scheduled for tomorrow, we should have plenty of opportunity to run the generator. I might even have a chance to catch up a little on processing my images.
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