Crystal Lakes

 On a beautiful sunny day, we headed up Highway 410 to Mt Rainier National Park to do the Crystal Lakes hike. We were able to go about 0.3 mile beyond Upper Crystal Lake to get views of Mt Rainier. We did about 6.6-6.7 miles round trip with 2,500 ft of gain.
At the beginning of the trail, a log bridge crosses this creek.

 There are a couple of places along the trail, where you get some views of Mt Rainier through the trees.













We found patchy snow from 3,550 ft on up. The snow was not too deep and in the morning was nice and solid. On the way down in the late morning, we did punch through the snow a couple of times.

 Lower Crystal Lake(2.5 miles up the trail) had completely melted and was a beautiful shade of green this morning.

 View of Crystal Peak between Lower and Upper Crystal Lakes.
















Wide angle view of Upper Crystal Lake, beginning to thaw. Chinook Peak is on the left.

 In the distance we could see Three Way peak to the northeast, with it's hole in the rock on the right side of the peak.

 We continued about 0.3 miles up the "trail" to 6,000ft using gps to stay as close to the trail as we could, and when we weren't sure, we stayed on thicker snow fields to avoid trodding on the meadows.










Wide angle view of Upper Crystal Lake from the east shore, Crystal Peak on the right

 View from our snack spot, Mt Rainier peaking over the saddle to the left of Crystal Peak, Upper Crystal Lake below.

 Nice view of Mt Rainier just off of a switchback about 0.7-0.8 miles from the trailhead.













some of the wildflowers we saw in bloom along the trail this morning: