Skyline Trail Loop and Panorama Point

The wildlife gates are shut and I really wanted to get some fall color photos in the high country.  

Honestly I’m not in good enough shape to do any of my normal late fall hikes such as Wagon Wheel or Mount Rose.  The Hamma Hamma road is still closed as well. 

Mount Rainier is open to cars all year and is a two hour drive from home.  I teamed up with my daughter and away we went.

I drug us both up the Skyline Trail.  She might have been in worse shape than me, it was a work out for both of us.  

We live at Sea level and the trail starts at over 5,000 feet.  When acclimating to high elevations it is recommended to do it by 5,000 feet at a time.  We ended up at over 7,000 feet, so we were breathing hard, but it was so worth it!

On our hike we saw a marmot, a deer, several chipmunks, a few pika  and a bear!  

We also saw a ton of  mushrooms along the trail.  But with it being a National Park we were limited, but not  as limited as I thought.  The limit is one gallon each, where in Olympic National Park the limit is one quart.  

Still you never know if the rangers know the actual mushroom harvest rules in their own parks.  There is at least one ranger out there who is on a crazy vendetta and doesn’t even know his own park rules.

We had a great time at Rainier and the crowds were not too bad, since we were there on a weekday and luckily we just happened to hike in the opposite direction as almost everyone else.

5.5 miles with 1,600 feet elevation gain

Nirada Falls

My class ended with a field trip to Mount Rainier.  Hiking with other people was really different for me.  The hike was tediously slow, but that gave me ample time to take pictures and the company was good.    The camp robber jays up there were much more aggressive than I am accustomed to.

The snow conditions were very nice. I enjoyed hiking in such dry snow.  I might go up there again on my own, but it's a long drive.

It was  a bit cloudy, but we got a good view of Pinnacle Peak and some other local views.

 We did a fun glissade at the end of the hike.

4 miles
600 feet elevation gain

Poles and shoes

Shoes

River

Trailhead

Camprobber Jay

Pinnacle Peak

pretty pointy tree

Camp Muir

This hike to Camp Muir was planned months in advance and was set up by a group of geocachers. The plan was to start hiking at 7am but at the last minute the inner group members decided to change the start time to 5am. I could not start at 5am because I needed a babysitter and had already hired a babysitter to join me at the campground at 6am. (I don’t know why the start time was changed and now two years later I wonder if it was changed for the purpose of excluding me from joining in.) Luckily for me I was not the only one who could not change their plans at the last possible minute so I did have company.

I left the house at 1:45 and it took me 3.5 hours to arrive at Cougar Rock Campground. I got turned around a couple of times and I stopped at MacDonald's in Yelm and again at a few geocache sites just out side Mount Rainier National Park.

Many of us were camping but most of the other campers left at 5am and I was left alone in the campground wondering why I bothered to hire a babysitter and wishing I had not come on this hike. I was feeling very let down but then a geocacher who calls himself Cruiser Guy walked up to my campsite and said he and some others were starting around 7:30 and would hike with me. So the hike was on and I would not have to go it alone.

At 6:15 on the day of the hike my pre-arraigned babysitter from Yelm arrived and I was able to meet up with my fellow geocachers at the trail head at 7:30. The hike up was tough but not as tough as I expected it to be. My three trips of Mount Rose really did help get me in shape. I was the second one in my group to reach the camp. Oddly the group that was to leave at 5am (but actually did not get started until 6:00) made it to the camp only an hour before we did. They must have hiked a lot slower. We met them at Camp Muir just as they were coming down.

Our group was slowed down quite a bit by an incredibly tenacious obese man who had to rest a lot. I give him a lot of credit for making it all the way up to Camp Muir. At the last rest stop before the Camp I decided to skip the break and keep on hiking. I was in a groove, and I did not want to stop. The obese man reached the summit just as the rest of us were getting ready to leave.

I brought my can pot and tea light stove with me and got to enjoy a hot cup of tea at
Camp Muir. I was glad that my stove performed the way it did at 10,100 feet!

Camp Muir is a funny little snowbound city 1/2 way up Mount Rainier from the
trail head. The views were grand and the weather was perfect.

After Lunch we navigated up a scary slippery pile of rocks above Camp Muir in order to log a geocache called "Banana Slugs and High Places".

It took us just under five hours to hike up but only two hours to hike down. On the way down we did a lot of glissading. At first I was very nervous about glissading because of my horrible experience on Mount Ellinor. My confidence started to build up towards the end and I was putting the brakes on less and letting myself go down the slopes faster.

We had to hike down the last third of the trail because there was not enough snow on it to
glissade. Three of us left the obese man and his friends behind and then we hiked down quite fast. The fast descent did not hurt my knees. All those hikes down Mount Rose really toughened up my knees.

We arrived back at the trail head at 4:30 PM and I drove back down to the campground
and sent my babysitter home.

Two of Cruiser Guy's Neighbors were camping across from me and they invited me over for fondue. It was wonderful, Cruiser Guy and his neighbors reminded me that there are a lot of good people out there to go along with the few rotten apples.

My three year old kept me up most of that night in the tent complaining that she was too cold (even though she was toasty warm) and both of us were in a right mood by the time day light came.

I grabbed a few geocaches on the way home. I was booked for three nights at Cougar Rock but I had to leave a day early to go to an appointment in Seattle.


(now two years later the same group was going to go up Adams but strangely the minute I posted that I intended to join them they all decided to wait until next year.)

Round Trip Mileage was about 8.5 and elevation gain was 4,600.  That rates a 31  on the Hike Difficulty Calculator.

Here is a slideshow a woman I was hiking with posted to the net.

Me enjoying a hot cuppa at Camp Muir


Above the clouds



The virtual geocache


Looking down at Camp Muir