Following In The Footsteps of John Muir Around Mt. Rainier
I’ve been reading a lot of, and about, John Muir lately. His essays on exploring glaciers in Alaska and the Sierras out west are engaging for both his writing style — which is more robust and expressive than I would have imagined a from a Scotsman in the late 1800s (while maintaining a scholarly perspective) — and his enthusiasm for the natural world. I’ve tried to ape his style a bit in my recounting of visiting Mt. Rainier National Park outside of Seattle, WA.
I visited Mount Rainier National Park yesterday. It’s the 100-year anniversary of the U.S. National Parks system, so admission was free and the park was crowded with sandal-clad and pack-toting tourists alike.
We drove for several hours down from Bellevue to reach the park, stopping in the small, nondescript town of Kent to visit an overrun Thai street food spot that came recommended to us by strangers on the internet. The pork, seasoned heavily in a spicy garlic sauce, was good.
We twisted and turned and drove straight through Washington’s version of suburban fast-food sprawl before arriving at the park, and still had miles to go before reaching Paradise, home to a visitors center at the base of Rainier. The road was surrounded by tall conifers, taller than I had ever seen before, with broad trunks and branches that reached fruitlessly towards the clear blue sky.
As we drove, the forest occasionally fell away to reveal the snow-draped face of Rainier, towering thousands of feet above us. We crossed the Nisqually River and saw the mountain on one side and a dry river bed on the other, which led down and out to the range of rugged, blue-tinted mountains below. They stretched for eternity, as far as my eyes could tell.
We pulled into Paradise and looked Mt. Rainier full in its majestic face, nary a cloud in sight. The parking lot was quite full, and as we walked through it to the trail head we passed representatives of the whole human experience: Waddling families chugging from soda bottles, bundled hikers who spoke of camp sites, foreign tongues and styles, old couples and young ones, people who had come to take pictures and people who were just emerging from a week in the wild.
We stopped in the visitors center to glance at a map of our hike, called the Skyline Trail. We filled our water bottles, which my hiking mate promptly forgot, and headed off.
The trail started as a series of intertwining paved paths, shooting off in many directions to begin different journeys. The thin black roads were easy to walk on but steep, and our calves, cold from hours in the car, strained with the effort. My friend commented that perhaps the whole five-mile trail would be paved like this. I thought that to be a stupid idea but I tempered my responses in case by some grace of a stupid god he was right.
Although the paths were filled with people, we were immediately and consistently struck by the beauty of the area. Shaggy green hills, populated with rocks ranging from pebbles to boulders, lined each side of the path. At many points, rows and rows of trees the color of emeralds filled the spaces both just beyond our grasp and out into infinity. The world was stunningly viridescent, save for the swaths of stones as well as the looming black and white behemoth that is Rainier.
The trail continued to wind and rise, and soon the pavement was replaced by well-groomed and dusty trail. Paradise fell away and our views of the mountains behind us, to the south and west, became more pronounced. We also began to encounter marmots with regularity. They sat along or sometimes on the trail, chewing and sniffing. Marmots are in hibernation for the majority of the year, so seeing them in-person is relatively rare. Chipmunks also darted up to and away from us, seeking snack. Tourists crowded on top of each other to take pictures of a wild animal that appeared curiously fine with its proximity to humans. We moved on.
Here the trail, which before had driven us towards the base of icy, towering Rainier, dove up and away, towards a lookout that afforded panoramic views of the park. At nearly 7,000 feet, exposed on the bluff, a chill breeze rode over us as we stared out in awe of the Pacific Northwest’s beauty. There was Mount St. Helens, and there, Mount Adams, and there, perhaps, is that Mount Hood? My friend and I took a photo together and looking upon it later I could only sigh, as our visages had spoiled the splendor.
Faced with the choice of returning down through the barrage of tourists or making a full loop of the trail, which circled southeast before returning to the lot, we chose the latter. We climbed onto a rocky ridge, and soon Rainier went from a constant companion just left of center to a memory behind us. We turned around occasionally to refresh the memory.
The trail here was rocky and surrounding us was a “moonscape.” There were immense patches of splintered rock laid over swathes of dust to our left and right. Banks of snow also appeared. The sun beat down on us, unopposed, and we covered our heads and faces to avoid the glare and eventual cancer.
The trail leveled and we passed a mountain stream that we would come to know well, as it journeyed alongside us for a time. All around the stream bloomed wildflowers in intense color, purple lupines and red Indian paintbrushes and lavender mountain heather. Here and at other points we could hear the rumble of falls that threw ice-white water down the faces of the nearby hills. The rumble was low and constant, like the pulsing of the world’s blood through rocky veins.
We stumbled down the dusty trail as the sun dipped lower in the western summer sky, casting golden bands of light on us through the conifer branches. We came upon the Stevens-Van Trump Monument Trail, and for a moment I was angry, thinking of the Donald, but soon realized that these were the names of two men who had first ascended Mount Rainier. The monument took the form of a stone throne, and we sat upon it and gazed up at the long-sleeping volcano once again, and admired the smock of cascading hills and trees it wore. By this time the occasional cloud had begun to roll past the mountain, and in an hour the summit would be mostly obscured.
After perhaps another mile, as the sun hung low, we veered westward and rejoined more heavily trafficked trails, which led to the parking lot. We were surrounded by people again, having only seen a select few who chose to hike the Skyline in the opposite direction for the last two hours. I felt changed as I strode among them, walking with the confidence of a teenager who had smoked pot before talking to one who had not.
The trail ended after 5.5 miles, and I went back inside the visitors center to water up before the long drive back north. As I floated over the flat wooden boards of the center, I looked up at the ceiling and down at the rangers doling out advice to travelers and to the bustle of hungry hikers who populated the cafeteria and thought of the millions of people who had also passed through here. I had accomplished a thing. I am still not sure what it was, beyond completing a loop. But it was something, and it is still with me, and perhaps always will be.
This is a fine trail around an even finer mountain and I recommend a visit in summer, when the weather is clear and the marmots are out sunbathing and the Paradise Valley earns its name.
