Wednesday, 20 July 2011

Mt Rainier

After a quick breakfast at the Days Inn in Bellevue, we headed out to go to Mt Rainier a bit better prepared, a plan in mind, but lacking in provisions. So the goal was to stop at one of the many Safeways™ along the way to Mt Rainier to set us up for the next four days or so.

Seattle Traffic… Noooo! We needed to proceed down the 90 to join the I5 to head to the Nth Eastern entrance to the park. I am sure many of you have been in traffic jams, but 6 lanes merging into 1 was a sight better observed than participated in. Luckily I was able to cross the lanes and exit on a side road. Here a navigation device would have helped. But with our free Seattle maps we were able to navigate parallel to the I5 until… a Safeway appeared. Seeing this - we thought lets pull in and provision and try to find our best way forward and back onto the path.

Interesting Aside: Most city maps are useful if you want to get out of the town not if you want to navigate to a particular side street or address. Data roaming is outrageously expensive - so perhaps an investment in good navigation device besides your co-pilot is useful for travelling harmony.

The shopping was interesting and free WiFi was useful, the shop also contained a Starbucks™. We completed our journey, joined Safeway - to get the discounts, Google™ mapped ourselves for the journey and we were on our way.

It was now getting closer to lunch time than we had planned. So we proceeded to follow and not follow the directions but found our way onto the 410. At Greenwater, we found a Safeway, made and ate our lunch. We grabbed a couple of Starbucks Lattes and headed out towards Mt Rainier.

The famed park entrance was being repaired, undaunted we proceeded. We were aiming to make it to Sunrise, inside Mt Rainier and get a good walk in then perhaps make it back to Crystal Mountain Ski area to spend the night.

We found the Crystal Mountain exit, eventually (more signs needed along the way) and drove up to see what it was like. The road up was narrow and winding, which makes you wonder about the drive up in winter time, even with chains on. A quick drive round the car park confirmed RV parking and so we headed onto Sunshine still hoping for a good afternoon walk.

At the park entrance we purchased an Annual US National Park Card and flyer ($80) that lets you get into all parks across the country, including Alaska and doing trail walks. A park map and newspaper were also provided, we progressed up the hill to Sunrise. The drive up was breathtaking and a little harrowing. The higher we progressed the more snow we observed. We made it to the Sunrise Carpark that had been ploughed clear, there was still at least 2m of snow in places visible.

Interesting Aside: As there is a fee to enter most parks this one was ($15) there was also the option of an Annual US National Park Card and flyer ($80) definitely a better option as you will make it up if you are visiting more than 5 parks in a year.

There was a Ranger guided walk leaving at 3:00pm so rushing to get ready, we joined it to get a feel for what was going on. The walk and talk was very informative on the park and the Mountain. At the end of the walk we asked the Ranger about available walks that were not too snow covered. She said there was a good walk up to a view point and that we could probably make it back before dark as sunset was about 8:30. We declined and instead took the option of a snow covered path that provided views of the mountain. The path had little flags in the snow to give you the idea of where the path would be if it was not under snow. We missed one of the viewpoints and were walking past another when some fellow walkers pointed it out to us.

Back in the carpark we entered the visitor information hut and proceeded to learn a lot more about the mountain. And the Ranges that travel up the West coast of the US. The rangers were helpful and suggested that we could camp at the White River Campground that night, toilets but no shower, the Glacier Basin Walk would be mostly snow free and would be a good walk to do in the morning before trying the Freemont lookout in the afternoon.

Interesting Aside: American Mountains are a lot higher than those in Australia, have year round snow and glacier coverage and cannot be walked up without a lot of planning. Experience or a guide does not go astray, the minimum suggested group size is 4 and minimum rope length 100ft to lift people out of crevices - helmets and ice-picks are mandatory.

We proceeded back down the mountain to have a look at the campground to see if we could make it work for us. The campground was clear and well laid out with a parking spot for Clancy, a picnic table and a fireplace. We decided that we would stay here rather than return to Crystal Mountain and proceeded to pay our $12 for the site and set ourselves up.

Hmmm, Cooking dinner at a fireplace means creating a fire. A small item that we had not really prepared ourselves for, besides the pot and pan. Thankfully there are firewood supplies and matches ($6) that enabled us to start our camp for the night. I have not been camping for a long time and not everything floated back to the frontal lobe quickly. Starting a fire for cooking turned into an adventure, but cooking was achieved with a lot of smoking out the neighbours who did offer to assist which by then it was too late as we had finished cooking our food and smoking our clothes.

Now it was time to test Clancy with the recently acquired airbeds see how we went.

Animals Spotted: Blue Stellar Jay, Chipmunk - scavenging for food, insects lots.

Day four no bears 

Animals Spotted:Chipmunks and insects.