Jul 20, 2013

We drove back to Mt. Rainier and up to Sunrise Visitor Center where we would begin our hike to the Mt. Fremont Lookout. The trail starts up a paved, steep section that is part of several other trails. There were quite a few people here. We passed many of them and it became less crowded as we got onto the next part of the trail.

We passed Frozen Lake, which has an amazing huge blue hunk of ice floating in it. It looks like a little glacier and it's awesome. After passing a field of beautiful wild flowers, the trail continues from here up a gravel path with big rocks and a steep drop.

The views of Mount Rainer from this part of the trail are amazing. It seems so close and so big. As the path narrows and we have to cross over a long section of bigger rocks, people are stopped and looking at mountain goats far down below. I never actually saw them, but Joanna insists they were there.

When we got near the end of the trail I could see clouds resting below the peaks in the distance. I've always wanted to hike above the clouds and see just the tips of mountains peaking out above them. This is the closest I've gotten so far, but I'll take it. For now.

The fire tower lookout at the end allows you a slightly better views of the full area. There are mountains stretching off in every direction and a chilly breeze blowing in. I liked the reflection in the fire tower windows.

We stayed up there for a while, taking in the amazing views of this massive mountain. Somehow this vantage point just made it seem unreal that we were standing next to something so big. I loved it. We took a different path for the hike down, requiring us to do some more snow sliding and possibly trail blazing. We had to take a dirt road back to the parking lot, but we made it.

After leaving the park we headed back toward Portland, stopping there again to go to Laughing Planet Cafe and Little Big Burger for food. We found a Trader Joe's to resupply on some foodstuffs then continued on to Eugene, where Saturday night was in full swing. We went to the Rogue Public House for a flight. They serve beers by Rogue and Eugene City Brewing, which is a small operation parented by Rogue. Their Libertine Imperial IPA is really good as is the Electric Peach by Rogue that I tried. There was a regular customer that was talking my ear off about local breweries and how things used to be as I sampled.

We walked down the road to Falling Sky Brewing, which looked good online and my bartender at Rogue said it was a good place to check out. I really like this place a lot, and they had an awesome selection. First of all, everyone was really nice there in helping me pick out my flight. Second, I love their presentation and their packaging. Their flight is served in this cloud and they give out free stickers. Can't go wrong with that.

I liked the Upside Brown Ale and the Kama Sumatra Coffee Porter, but the Standout was definitely the Don't Panic American Pale Ale. It was fantastically balanced and tasty. I wasn't ready to stop drinking just yet after the flight so I got another beer. I was just in a good mood and having a good time so I got another drink. Joanna and I were having a serious conversation about politics or the world or something else, which hasn't happened in a while so it was nice to discuss things over a beer even if I was the only one holding one. She still smelled them. We basically stayed there until they closed and then got back on the highway until we got to a rest stop on the I-5 with a nice grove of trees where we could set up our tent for the night out of sight.

Jul 19, 2013

After consulting with the rangers at the visitor center, we decided on the Glacier Vista trail because of its supposed lack of bad snow/ice conditions. We hiked up the paved trail from the visitor center, stopping at a waterfall view for some photos. We crossed a couple of bridges and continued up the steeper slope until we saw snow.

I guess the "less snowy" trail doesn't mean no snow. It was surprising to see so much snow cover, but we got right into it and learned the best way to walk through it was to dig our heels in for each step. It became easy once we got the hang of that. The snow was really nice and we were still in t-shirts, Joanna in shorts. The weather was great.

We stopped for photos in several places. I did some feet shots and tried to get a good angle on the huge mountain in front of us. We kept climbing up to a point where we could see the blue of several of the glaciers on the mountain. There was something about staring at the face of Mount Rainier that transfixed me and filled me with such a good feeling. Being in the presence of natural wonders will do that I suppose. It is awesome.

On our way down we decided to take the less-traveled route through the snow and down the slopes. We had no skis, but we did have heels and our backsides so we found a way to use them. It was a little cold, but it was a ton of fun.

You get the idea. We went up and down the slope a few times, sliding down and wanting to do more. The rest of the way down we did some sliding, but mostly on our heels. This was definitely one of my favorite experiences hiking for several reasons.

All of the campgrounds in the park were full, but we found one not far outside one of the entrances called La Wis Wis that ended up having a few spots. We found our spot, then we found a better spot, so we set up our tent there and smiled at it. We noticed a trail near our site so we took to it to find out where it led. It was a slightly steep walk that took us along a cascading stream with several small waterfalls and pools of water. They were really nice to look at and, it turns out, refreshing to dunk your head in.

After we played by the water for a while, we hiked back to our camp as the sun filtered through the hanging mossy branches. We wanted to do some more exploring of the area so we biked out of the campground up the main road. This is not as easy as it sounds since the entrance to the campground is a supremely steep winding road. I thought we were going for a nice bike ride! We got out to the road and decided to turn around before a steep decline that we would clearly have to come back up to get back to our site.

With the bike idea aborted we went for a walk along the river and around the campground and then came back to chill at our site and watch Breaking Bad for a couple of hours before bed.