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  Hiking up Mount Rainier with Friends
 
2005-08-22

The sone of some family friends in Germany who now lives in Melbourne, Australia, came to Seattle for some interviews with the Evil Empire (aka Microsoft).

Instead of doing the standard "show 'em around town" sightseeing trip, we decided to head up to Mount Rainier and do some wandering at the Paradise activity area on the southern slopes of the mountain. It takes a good three hours to get there, but we were able to chat the whole way, and then had a good time hauling our carcasses up the mountain.

Afterwards, some lunch, kindly provided by Samantha, and then the three hour ride back home. We were exhausted, but it was entirely worth it.
[Click on any photo for a larger view]
Arriving at Paradise, the weather was perfect for doing some hiking. Parking was a bit less optimal, however.
I've been to Paradise once before for some hiking (in like 1996), but had never actually stopped inside the lodge and hotel they have up here. Pretty cool.
Given that your starting elevation is at about 4500' or so (1300m), the air is already kind of thin when you start.
The views of the surrounding countryside are teh awesome, however.
And there's always this huge-ass mountain in front of you.
Everybody (and their dog) was out and about hiking today.
The trail up to Camp Muir is about 4.5 miles (7km) long.
That's Mount Adams waaay in the distance there.
The trails are extremely well maintained here.
It gets extremely rocky the higher up you.
The glaciers on the mountain are sadly shrinking a little bit each year, but still reach down quite a bit.
Every few hundred metres, you reach what you think is a local maximum, only to more stuff going UP in front of you.
Valk and Bodo getting ready for the next leg of the trip.
When you get tired, it's always worth stopping and checking out the countryside.
No point in getting sad about how much more above you there is. The mountain is 14.000' (4300m) tall!!
We finally made it up to the bottom of one of the glaciers, which is happily melting away.
It was about half of the way to Camp Muir, and given that we had already been at it for two hours (and had to get back down), and Bodo and Valk had the day before done a 27 hour trip from Melbourne to Seattle, we turned around and headed back down.
Helichopters!!! We couldn't figure out if this guy was a tourist or geological survey type folks.
People coming down from Muir. They musta started a lot earlier than us !!!
Working our way back down.
We took a slightly different trail back down. They had actually blocked a road and were launching a helicopter from the middle of the road.
Some sort of medical emergency or something.
Bodo and Valk taking a break on the way down. We were poooped!
What a great way to spend a Sunday!
Strike a pose!
 
 
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