-:
-
We took a day off our visits of Seattle to hike around Mt Rainier from Paradise Visitor Center (the South side). We first did the paradise loop and then continued up towards Muir Camp and stopped around 8000ft due to lack of time to finish the south loop:
glacier sliding down from the top
went to get some ice for lunch
those little chipmunks were bold and were everywhere :)
climbing to 8000ft gave us a better shot of the glacier
on the way down, we found lots of people going up to Muir
I see Johannes has friends who like to ski without lifts :)
the south loop took us by some lakes
I could tell those pretty birds weren't very wild
didn't take long before they came see me :)
Watch these little guys happily eating but carefully avoiding the sunflower seeds:
I've been told that those are Gray Jays, also known as camp robbers, and they can be a nuisance like seagulls, so I shouldn't have fed them. They seemed well behaved and careful, so I was tricked. My bad.
another big lake before hiking back up to the visitor center
it's definitely big, although 8000ft is a bit high, we didn't get anywhere close to the top
our loop
what we climbed on top of panorama point, doesn't look like much, but it was, and very uphill :)
We then finished our loop to the lodge and parking lot:
Paradise Camp lodge
By the time we finished our loop, for a bit over 8H, and we only had about 1H to check out the rest of the area before sunset. We had a quick look at things on the way down with whatever daylight we had left and finished with a night hike by Longmire Lodge:
river from the glacier
by then light was fading fast
After the quick loop by Longmire, it was time for the long drive back to Seattle (almost 2H drive). It was a good day. Our main hiking loop was 11.5 miles, 7.5h from 4900ft/1490m to 8200ft/2500m. I guess a 1000m/3300ft climb wasn't too bad.
