Mount Rainer is the most obvious feature on the horizon in Seattle as it towers over the city from nearly 50 miles away. Every evening the west face of it becomes glowing red from the sunset. It, in itself, is a national park to be explored, and a major stop on our trip agenda. The natural and majestic beauty of the mountain provides some great opportunity for picture taking and hiking. We had a game plan for the day to start off with groceries and head to the base of the mountain find a hike at the visitors center.
Without planning ahead I thought the mountain had a loop that went around it. However google maps took us to the West entrance which would have put us many hours behind had we exited a different way. This furiously agitated me and turned me in a bad mood for the day as we waisted almost two hours of hiking time trying to get to a good hike, however it was short lived as we were able to get in some hiking before it was too late.
After backtracking to the east side, we finally decided on hiking ‘Comet Falls’. Before we reached the starting point, however we stopped at the visitors center and got our stamps and passports. There is a nice hotel there that is hard to obtain reservations for but nonetheless looked like a great place to stay at the mid base of the mountain.
Scaling the Glacier cap of Rainer is usually began from this location. It would have been a great hike to scale the glacier, but that was WAY above Ashley and mines stamina, and time frame.
Now, This was our first hike for Ashley since she had her surgery. It was a 3 mile hike that ascended 1000 feet. This was not exactly the largest and toughest hike but for her it was incredible that she completed it! I could not believe that 6 days after her surgery she was hiking 2000 feet up the high altitude trails.
The hike itself is gorgeous and the falls are extremely high up and worth the effort to hike to. There is another set of Falls further back which is worth going to but we decided to head back as it was already getting late. We decided to drive through the remainder of the park and find a campsite as we knew with the limited light, we would be hard pressed to find one near.
We had to go inward into Oregon to find a campsite on the Ike Kinswe state park which is where we decided to do an oil change, (2nd of the trip). This was a peaceful campsite that was quite expensive however. Nonetheless we were thankful for finding something last minute and enjoyed our night cooking our food and supplies. Off to Portland the next day!
July 15 Expenses
27.13 gas
5.50 starbucks
35 camping
50 grocery
8.58 snack
Total – 126.21