Sunrise
Today, we had our first sunny day at Mt. Rainier. It was a beautiful day. All we had to do was drive 50 miles to the other side of The Mountain to see the sun. We talked to a ranger at the Visitor Center last night, and he gave us a 75% chance of seeing Mt. Rainier if we drove to Sunrise. When we woke up to a repeat of the cloudy skies we've seen over the last two days, our plan to drive to Sunrise was finalized.
To reach Sunrise, we passed Reflection Lake and dropped down into Stevens Canyon. The fog was so dense, we had to creep along until we reached the bottom of the canyon and dropped below the cloud layer. As we drove around the eastern flank of Mt. Rainier, the clouds disappeared and we could see The Mountain. We switchbacked up the ridge above the White River Canyon to Sunrise with Mt. Rainier clearly visible nearly the entire way.
We reached Sunrise
about 9:00 to a mostly-empty parking lot. We added another layer of warmth to deal with temperatures
in the upper 40's and set out for Shadow Lake. This is an easy hike with wildflowers lining the edges of the trail nearly the entire way to the lake.
The wildflowers weren't massed into large displays but were scattered with a good variety of species. We saw bistort, lupine, meadow penstemmon, scarlet
paintbrush, magenta paintbrush, elephanthead, white mountain heather, red mountain heather, spreading phlox, harebell, corn lily, rosy spirea, pasque flower,
asters, Gray's lovage, subalpine daisy, mountain dandelion, and subalpine buttercups. When we reached Shadow Lake, there was just enough of a breeze to create
ripples across the surface of the lake. We didn't have the glassy surface we had hoped for. As soon as we finished shooting and hiked back to the other side
of the lake, the breeze died down and the lake reflected Mt. Rainier and the surrounding ridges. It was toying with us.
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On the way back up to Sunrise, we hiked the Sunrise Rim Trail overlooking the White River Canyon and Glacier Basin. Any break in the trees provided a stunning view of the Emmons Glacier and a turquoise lake created by the glacial flour in the glacier runoff. Our 3-mile hike was more like a stroll with all our stops to shoot Mt. Rainier and enjoy the wildflower meadows.
We made a brief detour to Tipsoo Lake
on the way back to camp. This is a good sunrise location for shooting reflections of Mt. Rainier in the lake.
When we arrived, Mt. Rainier was visible and the lake was quiet. By the time we got turned around and parked, the clouds had rolled in and obscured
Mt. Rainier again. The lighting wasn't great, but it still seemed mean that the clouds would roll in just as we got there.
When we returned to the south side of Mt. Rainier, clouds again obscured Rainier. We don't know if it was like that all day, but we were glad we drove up to Sunrise today..
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