Playing in the snow in August.

[B Finnigan]

Me, the wife and daughter took off this morning to climb up one of the volcanic spurs of Mt Rainier. We started out at Sunrise elev 6400 feet. The weather was not perfect but there was no rain. We made it to the second spurr at 7600 feet.

You can almost see the trail. Little Tahoma, a volcanic cinder cone next to Mt Rainier (Big Tahoma).

Emmons glacier, the largest one on Mt Rainier.

Triple waterfall comming off the glacier. It drops at least 500 feet.

We were very lucky to see some mountain goats. There were about twenty of them spread out.

Whistling marmot chowing down some grub.

Jessica with a snowball.

Jessica said she wanted to touch a cloud. On our decent we came up to a ridge that had a cloud blowing up and over it. So I told her to reach up and touch the cloud!

Some guy that pounds on steel and makes huge messes in his shop.

We wanted to get up to the third spurr at over 8000 feet but the clouds were moving in fast. The wind was also blowing around 20 MPH and was pretty cold. Whiteouts are very dangerous because you can't even see the trail or your feet. They can drop the temp by twenty degrees in just a couple minutes.

I shot some video of the cloud mist rolling in and some panoramics.

Video 1

Video 2

 

[nephildevil]

AWESOME!

reminds me i want to visit mountains somewhere sometime

 

[B Finnigan]

It's always fun to get the kids out from in front of the computer and TV to experience some unique wilderness. Seeing the mountain goats was certainly the high point of the hike. I have been backpacking and climbing around Mt Rainier Nat'l park since I was a kid and have only seen them twice.

Overnight it snowed a couple hundred feet below where we were. It would be cool to go back up and see fresh snow.

 

[Vorpal Blade]

Beautiful pics. Looks wonderful up there.

 

[Troop]

Very Cool. :thumbup: Thanks for the pics.

 

[B Finnigan]

I hope this encourages the rest of you to hit the wilderness before summer is over. Even though I feel like a truck backed over me today I would do it again in a heartbeat. We passed a couple hikers doing the same climb that looked like they were in their sixties. I hope I am still doing this when I get to that age.

When we stopped at the ranger station at the park entrance we got that incredible sniff of the sub-alpine forrest with those massive Doug firs. That smell is beyond words and really charges you up for the hike.