Beautiful day to hike up to Shriners Peak off of hwy 123 on the east side of Mt Rainier National Park. This is an 8.5 mile round trip hike with 3,434 ft of gain. The first 2.5 miles of the trail is in the forest.
sunlight shining through the morning fog
At 2.5 miles, the trail opens up and we had our first view of Mt Rainier. We encountered snow shortly before this, and the snow became consistenly on the trail at 4,700 ft.
From here, the trail continues going up, sometimes on the open slopes with views of Mt Rainier, other times back into the forest.
Most of the trail only had a few inches of snow on it. We were fortunate that there had been one other hiker before us, who left us tracks all the way up to the lookout.
Snow covered Shriners Peak, the lookout and top of the peak are out of site on the far side of the peak.
We would watch the clouds dance around Rainier throughout our hike.
I love fresh snow, so beautiful!
some more views of Rainier as we continued up the trail
Less than 1/4 mile from the top, the fire lookout comes into view
Cloudy views of Rainier while we were on top of Shriners Peak
The fire lookout is boarded up for the winter.
snow covered trees
icicles on branches
Gorgeous day even with the clouds!!!
We saw some fungi on the lower forest section of the trail:
Beautiful day to hike up to Shriners Peak off of hwy 123 on the east side of Mt Rainier National Park. This is an 8.5 mile round trip hike with 3,434 ft of gain. The first 2.5 miles of the trail is in the forest.
The fire lookout is boarded up for the winter.
snow covered trees
Gorgeous day even with the clouds!!!
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