Category: Mt. Rainier

Ranger Creek – Sunday August 16, 2015

Morning inside temp 51 and outside temp 43.

Hiked with Dennis to Lake Eleanor and then on to Grand Park meadow inside Mt. Rainier Natl Park.

Started at 12:30 back to trail head at 5:00 traveled 8 miles and I was tired.  Nice hike on a beautiful sunny day.
The mountain was clouded in by the time we got to Grand Park but that is what living here is all about, clouds and rain.  Mt. Rainier actually makes it’s own climate around itself.  The entire Pacific Northwest was clear yesterday except for the area around right around the mountain.
Dennis at the trail head.
Trail head map to lake.
Beautiful day in the old growth forest.
Lake Eleanor
Another Lake Eleanor.
Trail above Eleanor.
Little wild life.
First meadow
Mt. Rainier from the first meadow, by the time we got to Grand Park the mountain was clouded in.
One of the first views of Grand Park meadow.
iPad to WordPress

Paradise, Mt. Rainier Natl Park – Monday July 7 – 10, 2014

I started this blog so the kids could keep track of us when we were on vacation.  As of last Thursday both Jean and I are on the great vacation as in retirement.  I have also focused on posting pictures of each campsite we have visited.  This is our first retirement campsite.

Dean gave us 4 days and 3 nights at Paradise Inn at Mt. Rainier and we had a great time.  I was up each morning and hiked up the hill with a goal of getting to Panorama Point above Paradise, or at least get close.  One of the biggest challenges is the snow has hung on late this year.  The trail was 98% snow covered on Tuesday morning and about 92% snow and ice this morning.  Walking on the ice and snow takes a lot more energy and I’m not in the best of shape.  This morning I left at 5:30 a.m. and got to Panorama Point at 7:45 a.m, back to the lodge at 9:45 a.m.   I was alone on the mountain until I started back. I could see people coming up the trail at 7:00 however they did not catch me until I was on the way back.

I am still working at how to add hiking maps into this blog from my new InReach Explorer.

Here is Monday’s hike from the InReach website and in Topo
Wednesday Topo view:
The trail “Y’s” a short way up the hill and on Wednesday I tried the right side of the Skyline trail, however it was snow covered and it started across a steep open face.  I decided it was best to turn back and go the safer route.

Remember this is a satellite photo from 2012 and this year 95% of the ground north of Paradise (above in the picture) is white in snow.

Today’s topo shows the trail all the way to Panorama Point.
This is today in an aerial format:

Finally this is Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with the GPS data downloaded from Delorme and put into Google Earth map.

Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:

My InReach is set to transmit my location every 10 minutes to the satellite and store inside the units memory my location every minute.  I connect the InReach to my laptop to get the 1 minute locations posted into the Delorme website.

Jean got to sleep in each morning and we spend most of the day reading and looking around Paradise.  In the evening we spent some time looking through telescopes the park had set up at the visitor’s center with two very knowledgeable astronomers.  One afternoon they set up a telescope and we got to look at sun spots on the sun, that was really cool.  I did get a few pictures over the three hikes, 517.

We ate most of our meals in the Paradise Inn restaurant so I had to include this picture for Tanya.