In late April last year Octo & I tried to ski into Grand Park at Mt. Rainier. We only had a two-day weekend and we got hit with an unusual late spring snow storm that slowed us down a bit so we didn't make it all the way. Neither of us had ever been into Grand Park so we also wasted some of our precious weekend hours wandering around in the trees looking for the best route. Don't get me wrong, we had a great camping trip and got some fine forest and road skiing in, but we still want to make it into Grand Park in mid-winter someday. This weekend I hiked in on the trail to see what it looks like in summertime. Hopefully this will make it a little easier to find our way in the winter if we happen to get hit with another blizzard while we're there.
Here's a few comparison pictures. The trail in to Lake Eleanor, then and now:
Our forest camp (night & day/winter & summer):
Since I got to drive instead of ski the 8 1/2 miles in on Huckleberry Cr Road, the hike in only took a couple of hours. Still, I was a little surprised at how long the part from Lake Eleanor up to Grand Park took. On our original trip, I think we were within a few dozen yards of the first opening where you could see Rainier when we turned around. I saw a picture somewhere where they called this meadow “Grand Parklet.”
Since we still had to break camp and ski all the way out to the car, we quit pretty early that day, but I think even if we had not turned around when we did we wouldn’t have had time to make it all the way to the park. This time it was an hour hike (uphill) from the Parklet to Grand Park and the way we were skiing last year, stopping every few minutes looking for landmarks, it probably would have taken a couple of hours. Next time it should be a easier – We can follow a general compass bearing from the lake and then there is a little ridge crest we can try to stay on top of that should lead us right to the park.
The rest of the photos from Grand Park and Berkely Park are here: [on my Picasa page].
There's a bunch of shots showing a bit more of the landscape to remind us what we'll be looking for this winter as well as few frogs and marmots thrown in just for fun.
