Mt. Rainier National Park

After a very nice break in Seattle visiting family, I got back on the road and started hitting up the trails again. After a short(ish) morning drive away from the SeaTac traffic nightmare, I made my way to Mt. Rainier National Park. Since I still had plans to do some driving later in the afternoon, I chose the Ranger Falls trail. The hike up past Ranger Falls up to Green Lake is a beautiful and quiet little hike and is worth it just for the smell alone. I don’t have the most sensitive sniffer, but the air in there was like a mix of clear water with hints of marshmallow and cinnamon, with occasional accents of rich, moldy earth wafting in from nearby overturned dirt and growing moss.

Along with the wonderful fragrance, the trail itself was beautiful. I have to admit that the fact that I didn’t see a single other soul helped with my impression quite a bit, but the running water on the way to Ranger Falls was wonderfully peaceful. The real cherry on top of everything was Green Lake though. I think it may be the quietest place I visited throughout the whole trip. Even whistling a bit I could hear the echo come back to me and not a single other sound to complement the two. For a relatively short hike, the payoff of a serenely still (and incredibly green) lake was absolutely worth it. I probably could have stayed there all day, but since I had a bit of driving to do to get to my campsite, I only lingered for about 45 minutes before heading back down.

On to Mt. Hood

I spent a fair amount of the rest of that day driving through Olympia and into the Mt. St. Helens area, which I have to say I didn’t much care for. Olympia was fine, but Mt. St. Helens clearly can’t seem to make up its mind what kind of topography it is supposed to have and is clearly a region that cannot be trusted. My sense of unease with the general area was compounded by arriving a bit late to my campground, and then having to set up camp in the dark. While usually my apprehension for the place would seem unwarranted, my unease ended up being justified because I had an actual goddamn black bear wake me up a 2:30 in the morning by pushing my head through the walls of my tent. Easily one of the scariest moments I can remember but in the end after I gave it a, “yo!”, it ran off rather noisily off into the woods and.

I was pretty spooked after that so I ended up not falling asleep for a long while, and didn’t stay asleep for any substantial amount of time as I was almost immediately awoken by the noisiest little birds around 5 AM. I tore down my camp in a pretty foul mood, snapped one good photo, and got the hell out of there.

Once I actually got to the Mt. Hood area, things settled down a bit. The park itself was a bit disorganized when it came to fees and passes and all the fun bureaucratic red tape that seems to go with hiking anywhere outside of Alaska, but the area was really nice. The aroma of the woods was less of a sweet scent than it was kind of an overly hot Christmas tree, but I still liked it quite a bit and got the sense that I’d really love the area with a bit of snow. The trail I had chosen for the day was a pretty stark contrast to the Ranger Falls hike though, in that it was just packed with foot traffic. Regardless, once I made it to Tamanawas Falls, I had the spot mostly to myself for a little photo-op.

After I made my way back out from the falls, I headed to Trillium Lake, where I spent the evening at easily the nicest campground I visited on this trip. Perfect tree cover, a beautiful lake, quiet campers, and friendly waterfowl made for a nice quiet evening and some actually restful sleep unlike the evening before.

Bend and Beyond

After a good night’s sleep I packed up early again and made my way to Mt. Bachelor. This honestly was the first destination where I left with the feeling that I should have done a bit more research. Mt. Bachelor is great for mountain biking and winter activities, but is honestly a pretty lame hike on foot. It’s not terribly difficult due to a fairly soft gradient, but it is pretty long and not terribly interesting to look at. On top of that, the last 1,000-1,5000 feet of the ascent are a crazy free-for-all scramble of rocky bullshit that ends with a not particularly interesting vantage.

I took the “Wahooga Trail” to the top, and the word trail is generous beyond merit. Anyways, here’s what the south-facing(?) view from about 9,000 feet looks like.

I scrambled my way back down and then after a short drive I was in Bend enjoying some hot wings and beer with live music, which I do have to say I enjoyed a great deal more than the hike a bit earlier.

The next morning was another driving day, but I made a short and final stop in southern Oregon at Crater Lake. I’m not even sure I’d call the walk to Watchmen’s Lookout a hike, but it was absolutely worth the walk to look at it. If only those pesky tourists hadn’t gotten in the way of all my pictures… The absolute nerve of some people!

I thought about lingering for a bit longer to try and nab a better photo, but I could tell that as the day went on the number of other people was only going to get higher. I decided to make better use of daylight by driving and it wasn’t long before I said goodbye to the Pacific Northwest, and hello to California!