Mount Rainier, WA | Part 1

We were stoked to make our way to Mount Rainier. A group of our friends had recently spent a few days there hiking and their pictures and suggestions had us excited to check it out for ourselves. Mount Rainier reaches 14,410 feet above sea level and is a popular destination for both hikers and climbers.

We got to the Park late in the day and the rangers told us that only one campground, White River, still had availability... we raced to the other side of the Park to claim one of the last sites available! We had enough time after setting up camp to go on a quick hike before dinner, so we set out to do a couple miles of the the Glacier Basin Trail - we even passed some climbers coming back from conquering the top of Mount Rainier... talk about inspiring!

When we settled back in at our campground, we made friends with our neighbors who, oddly enough, both lived in Cambridge (one went to MIT and one to Harvard - our old apartment was smack in the middle of the two colleges). We chatted a bit about Boston then learned they were heading out the next morning to begin their climb up Mount Rainier.

The next morning we packed up camp and drove over to Grove of the Patriarchs to see thousand-year-old trees. It's an easy trail that gets super crowded with families and tour groups but the towering trees were really cool to see - some of them measure 40 feet in circumference and tower nearly 300 feet tall! One of the tour groups happened to be Russian, so Taras eavesdropped on some of the trail highlights (hey, we couldn't pass them, so we might as well learn something!) and he easily found new friend to take our picture.

We had also planned to hike Comet Falls, based on a suggestion from our friends, but we slept in and got caught up in the Grove of the Patriarchs longer than we planned, so we decided to skip this one. But it sounds beautiful and challenging (a lot of uphill hiking!).

-Amanda

Glacier Basin Trail:

Camp dinner - veggie fajitas:

Grove of the Patriarchs:

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