Thursday, 21 July 2011

Mt Rainier

Morning we awoke refreshed after a comfortable nights rest. Having put the wood safely away to avoid moisture I attempted my second fire to boil water for coffee. A slightly less smoky affair but not a roaring success [sic].

Our neighbours came over as we were preparing to head off for our walk and offered us some fire baked potatoes - which were delicious. I think they may have seen our cold breakfasts and felt that we were failed campers. There campsite was set up for feasting with gas burners and a raging fire.

We ate the offered potatoes that had been cooked with some onion and thyme, they were delicious. We then prepared to head off on our short morning walk. When we thanked our neighbours for the food they offered us some chocolate brownies for the walk, so generous it was very pleasing. We left Clancy in the campsite as we expected to return before the 12 noon vacate time and headed out.

The Trail meandered along the White River offering views of the forest, river bed and hills that lined the river. As we proceeded up the trail it went through a series of switchbacks as we gained altitude. We met some returning hikers who had stayed overnight at the Glacier base camp, they shared with us that they had seen a black bear about 200ft off in the meadow as they were proceeding back down the trail in the morning. Now this got me excited at the prospect and Shoeleh a little cautious over the prospect of bumping into a bear along the way.

The Trail remained relatively snow free as we ascended, or so we thought…. We rounded a corner and found a tree freshly marked with claws of an animal looking for food, about 50m further on was a log that had been adjusted in search of insects to eat. Here again our relative prospects of meeting a bear provided fear and excitement.

Not too much further along the trail started to be covered by snow for sections. A Ranger caught up to us here and we chatted about the trail and the bears. His view was trail fine, bears - there were no nuisance bears around this part of the park.

Interesting Aside: Nuisance bears are the ones that when you have a late spring snow "knock" on the rangers door at Sunrise to see if there is any food spare to be shared. This we did not find out about till the next morning.

The Ranger walked off at great pace and disappeared out of sight. We continued to follow the progressively more snow covered path. A while later we bumped into the Ranger again having morning tea, we passed him and progressed further only to have him pass again in no time at all.

Along this path there were flags to point the trail along with a steady line of foot prints, this did not necessarily make the walking easier but it did at least progress certain. Finally we made it to the Glacier Basin Campsite, many were covered in snow while others were a little muddy from melted snow. Immediately past the campsite we came into the meadow, it was beautiful with flowers groves of trees heading up the hill towards Sunrise, a river bubbling along behind us, mountain glaciers and moraine to be viewed and the enormity of Mt Rainier became apparent. We watched as a group of 4 mountaineers progressed up to the next base camp where they would spend the evening before attempting an early morning ascent to the mountain.

It is important to note at this point other than a fleeting glimpse of the summit on our way up to Sunrise yesterday afternoon we had not yet really seen the peak of this active volcano!

We sat in the meadow while families of chipmunks played and ate about us. We also sampled some of the gifted brownie which was delicious. After a short while we decided to retrace our steps down the 3+ mile path. Now the journey down was in some ways not as easy as the climb. We also noted that we were not going to return to the campsite before the checkout time.

The journey back was hampered by an ever softening snow making the easy of walking on hard snow on the way up a little more difficult. In the end we made it back to Clancy at 1:45pm to find that a Ranger had left a note telling us that we had missed our checkout and that Clancy needs to be moved.

Given the time it was decided to progress to the Ohanapecosh Campground and forego the Sunrise walk as the idea of walking through more snow did not appeal to us. So we proceeded out of the campground and back onto the 410. The road was interesting and provided many breathtaking views of mountain and the surrounding hillsides. Our new revised plan was to make camp and then to proceed to walk up to Silver Falls and onto the Grove of the Patriarchs before returning to the campsite.

After proceeding onto the 123 we were getting closer to another of the entrances to Mt Rainier- Stevens Canyon Entrance. As we got closer we decided that we would rather go to Cougar Campground in the park, so at the turn off (705) into the park we decided to enter. At the entrance we used our recently acquired entrance tag to save $20.

The Grove of the Patriarchs is a short walk through an amazing grove of old growth forest that through the quirks of years of snow melts isolated this grove from the surrounding forest providing an amazing biopic of the region at this level. The size and heights of trees was amazing, along with that of the fallen trees that are nursing new trees into the forest by providing them a base to grow above the forest floor. The trees in the grove are about 1,000 years old and range upwards to nearly 300ft tall, which standing less than 6ft tall gives you an amazing perspective on height and distance.

So after this short walk we got back to the carpark and had a first carark experience with day tourists. We escaped and headed up the road. The path from the entrance to the Cougar campgrounds was amazing, full of vistas of trees, waterfalls, lakes along with birds and deer but no bears where to be seen.

The cougar campground was achieved late and we then attempted to locate a spot. The park has lots of spots many pre-booked and very few vacant. Luckily we found a spot and set up for the night. Again a $12 spot with toilets, water and no showers. This was my next cooking night - the fire again provided many opportunities for learning, in the end dinner was cooked and served. We sufficed on black beans and eggs which tasted great. Too tired to go to the Rangers talk we retired into the back of Clancy for a well earned rest.

Animals Spotted: Birds, deer, a squirrel and lots of insects.

Day five no bears  - but we did get to see what they can do to a tree if they get hungry.