Grand Park via Lake Eleanor at Mt Rainier National Park

 Drove up to FSR 73 off of Hwy 410 to do the hike into Grand Park from Lake Eleanor on the north side of Mt Rainier National Park. We hiked 9+ miles rt with about 1,100 ft of elevation gain.
The hike starts in the National Forest and entered Mt Rainier National Park aft 0.25 mile. The trail starts in the woods and begins to climb up towards Lake Eleanor.

 Parts of the trail was very wet and muddy.

 Lake Eleanor is reached 1 mile from the trailhead. There are campsites here. Shortly after the camp, the trail begins to descend a short ways.













In another 1/2 mile, we reached a large meadow, with a view of the top of Mt Rainier.

There is a good sized pond in this meadow.

 After the meadow, the trail reenters the woods and begins climbing again.

 At 3 miles from the trailhead, the trail enteres Grand Park, we had a nice view of Mount Freemont.

 In another 1/2 mile, Mt Rainier came into view.

As we continued along the trail, we saw lots of lupine and American bistort in bloom. The clouds began to cover Mount Rainier. We had nice views of Mount Freemont, the Burroughs and Skyscrapper Mountain.

 Looking back at Grand Park, it is very large!

 At 4.5 miles from the trailhead, the trail joins the Northern Loop trail, we continued to hike along this trail to the southeast until the trail began to reenter the woods and go downhill. There was a glimpse of the side of Mt Rainier behind the clouds.









 AS we returned along the trail, we kept looking back and enjoying the views and the flowers

Some of the wildflowers we saw in bloom along the trail today with some other flora: