Russ and Rob's Travels: Mount Rainier

Mount Rainier National Park was established in 1899 and is famous for its dense forests, dazzling wildflower meadows, tremendous snowfields and rugged glaciers. 96% of the park is designated as wilderness.

Mount Rainer is capped with 26 glaciers and has a dense forest of Douglas fir, western red cedar and western hemlock surrounding its base.

The roads leading through the park are windy and narrow and especially where there was low elevation the trees were close to the road. These roads are only open between July and late September. It is not hard to see why when it is now summer and there are large amounts of snow still around.

There are 5 entrances to the park. We drove in from Seattle through to Sunrise and we exited the park at Paradise. Sunrise is the highest point in the park that you can reach by vehicle , 6400 ft above sea level. We were lucky to have a sunny afternoon so were able to get some breathtaking views of Mount Rainier and the cascade range that surrounds it. Amongst the snow the meadows and roadsides had wildflowers starting to bloom. From Sunrise we went to White River camp ground where we camped for the night.

When a girl first saw the subalpine meadows, she exclaimed “ this must be what Paradise is like”- hence the name. The following day we made our way to Paradise seeing more snow, crossing glacier flowing rivers and driving alongside some beautiful lakes. We walked down to Narda waterfall and across Box Canyon Gorge. We saw 2 Black tailed deer , a marmot and a variety of birds.

Paradise is where the park’s main visitors centre is located. Here we went to see an information video on Mount Rainier. Paradise is a prime winter use area where an average of 680 inches of snow falls. It also receives on average 126 inches of rain.

Mount Rainier is a sleeping volcano having the potential to erupt again at some unknown time just like that of Mount St Helens. There are no words to describe this area other than just

Simply stunning ......