I enjoyed the wildflowers above Myrtle Falls so much yesterday that I wanted Carol to see them today. This also gave me the chance to correct the mistakes I made yesterday when shooting wildflowers "from toes to the mountain." When I looked at yesterday's shots, I hadn't concentrated on getting down and into the wildflowers. That's a major challenge at Rainier where you have to stay on the paved paths. I'm more used to shooting on hikes away from the major tourist areas where you can walk off the trail and explore an area. Here you have to use a zoom lens to get close enough to the wildflowers.
We got a relatively early start to get a parking place at Paradise and have early morning light on Mt. Rainier. We hiked the 1/2 mile to Myrtle Falls
and started shooting. We got there about an hour later than I was there yesterday, and that seemed to make a major difference in mosquito attacks. I hadn't seen any mosquitoes until 9:00 yesterday, but they were eating us for breakfast today. We were miserable!
When we moved away from Edith Creek, the mosquitoes weren't quite so bad and we could concentrate more on the photography. We spent the morning shooting wildflowers above the trail as foreground for Mt. Rainier. It was a bright, cloudless morning, and Mt. Rainier was out in all her glory.
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Carol's favorite spot was the small cascades just above the bridge over Myrtle Falls. The stream had wildflowers on both sides, crystal-clear water, and Mt. Rainier towering over the ridge behind it.
My favorite for the day was a ptarmigan family. As I was finishing up shooting wildflowers on the Skyline Trail, I looked back and saw a brown blob that looked out of place on the hillside. I watched it, but it didn't move. Still, there seemed to be a head attached to the blob. I put on my long lens and decided to see if it was something other than a rock. A ptarmigan hen was nearly covered by the wildflowers around it. As I was trying to get any kind of clear shot of her, the hen started walking toward me through the wildflowers and heather. She came out in the open and watched me for a couple moments and then started walking toward me again. Eventually, she was standing at my feet with her brood of chicks. When the chicks climbed up on the trail, they knew it was time for their dust bath. They wriggled and flapped until they had a thin covering of dust all over them. I tried to move back up the path to give the hen a chance to gather all 4 chicks and cross the path, but every time I moved, she moved toward me. When more hikers approached, the hen finally crossed the path and found new wildflowers to eat.
The beginning of the Golden Gate Trail is not only a good area for wildflowers, but it's also a favorite marmots hangout. On this trip, we had only seen one marmot in this area and that was from a distance. I asked some hikers coming down the trail if they had seen any marmots, and they said one was sitting eating lupine a short distance up the trail. I put my 70 - 200 mm zoom on my camera and started walking up the trail. As promised, the marmot was standing on its hind legs, bending down the lupine, and eating the flowers. When I got within range, the marmot started getting a little nervous, so I knew I couldn't get closer. Then, I realized I forgot to put the doubler on my lens. I didn't want to carry my 70-200 and my 100-400, so I carried the doubler with the 70-200. By the time I got the doubler on my camera, the marmot was running through the lupine field. What should have been a close-up shot of the marmot eating lupine, was now a much longer shot of him sitting in the lupine. I had blown it. I still got an ok shot of him surrounded by the lupine, but I missed "The Shot."
We returned to camp about 1:00, ate lunch, downloaded images, and took a nap.
Dinner was an orange chicken feast followed by a walk around the campground to look for the best campsites for our next trip to Mt. Rainier.
It seems obvious that Mt. Rainier will be one of the first parks dropped from our itinerary as we age. It's a beautiful park, but nearly everything in the park is vertical. Reflection Lake, Narada Falls, the trail to Shadow Lake, Ricksecker Point, Inspiration Point, and a few other places are accessible from the road. Nearly every other major destination is a significant up-hill climb. Even Paradise is an immediate climb to the best wildflower areas. The Myrtle Falls area is only 1/2 mile and a small climb, but that is more of the exception. We're always amazed at the extreme variety of people hiking at Mt. Rainier. People of all ages seem to zoom up and down the trails, but we're not in that group. Tonight, we would have liked to drive around the park and shoot wildlife, but there aren't any areas to see wildlife without hiking. Mt. Rainier is for the fit, and we're starting to drop out of that category. By the time we return again, we will probably be even more limited in the hikes we take.
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