Paradise Snowshoe and Christine Falls

We only had this morning to get in a snowshoe, so we drove up to Paradise at Mt Rainier National Park and snowshoed up towards Glacier Vista, taking our time and soaking in the beautiful views. We did about 1.5 miles round trip with 500 ft of gain. We arrived at Paradise about 10 AM and the parking lot was about 1/3 full and most people were already out of sight. Very peaceful toady.

It was 22F when we started, but with no wind, it felt warm in the sunshine. It was nice to see the trees frozen in snow. When we stayed in the previous tracks, the snow was well packed. As soon as we went into the fresh snow we post holed quite a ways with our snowshoes on.

A winter wonderland

The sun rays shone down on the Tatoosh Peaks to the south.

Gorgeous!

Here the sun rays were highlighting Mt Adams to the far south.

Mt Rainier is majestic covered in winter snow fields.

View of the Tatoosh Range

zoom of Mt St Helens

zoom of Mt Adams

zoom of Old Snowy

Lower Christine Falls

Upper Christine Falls

zoom of the ice near Christine Falls

Icicles along the rocky cliffs next to the road by Christine Falls

 

Franklin Falls

It has been below freezing up in the mountains for a week, so I thought I'd check out Franklin Falls and try the route from Exit 52. This is about 4 miles round trip with 460 ft of loss/gain. The forecast was far sunny weather, but it was mostly cloudy this morning. I did not see any other people on this trail while I was here. I parked at the Summit West parking area (ski lifts didn't open until 4pm today) and walked the 1/4 mile to the berm closing forest road 58. I could see a nice "trail" from previous day snowshoers, but there were no fresh tracks since the last snowfall.

The mountains were playing peekaboo in the clouds this morning.

Before the road goes into a big switchback, I could see some had taken a short cut down to the lower bend in the road. I decided to stick to the road.

Another view of nearby peaks. From the bottom of the switchback, I took the short Wagon Road Trail to join the Franklin Falls Trail.

The last section of the trail down to the falls was very narrow, steep and icy. I could not place one snowshoe in front of the other, so I walked down sideways here.

View of Franklin Falls from before the avalanche debris from last winter.

The avalanche debris with a steep drop off down. Not knowing if I could get back up in the snow and ice by myself, I decided to stay up on the trail to take my photos.

zoom of Franklin Falls

another zoom

one of the icicle covered rock walls

South Fork of the Snoqualmie River downstream from the falls, not wanting to go sideways up the trail, I switched to micro spikes and found them sufficient for the hike back up to the main road.

It was still cloudy as I continued up on the closed forest road, it even snowed for a while.

I liked this tree growing on top of a boulder.

South Fork of the Snoqualmie River along the forest road

South Fork of the Snoqualmie River near the end of the forest road heading back to the main road.

 

Ranger Falls and Green Lake

The Carbon River Entrance at Mount Rainier National Park has recently opened, so we drove up to hike to Ranger Falls and Green Lake, a 10 mile round trip with 1,500 ft of gain. We only saw 3 other hikers along the closed road portion of the hike, and had the Falls/Lake trail to ourselves.

View of the Carbon River from the parking area at the end of the road. There was a nice light layer of fresh snow from last night.

The Carbon River complelely eroded away the road at the park entrance last fall. The park has made a narrow trail through the forest to lead to the old parking area at the entrance. Trail is on the right, road washed away behind the barrier on the left.

Standing at the closed road in the park looking back at where the road once was. We are parked behind the orange barricade in the distance. 

After reaching the old parking area, the first 3 miles are in the forest along the closed Carbon River Road. Shortly before the Ranger Falls trail, we had this lovely view of Tirzah Peak and the Carbon River.

Sun shining through the trees as we hiked up towards Ranger Falls.

The trail goes under this large nurse log.

We saw many icicles along the way today.

More sunshine through the snowy trees.

Ranger Falls is one mile up the trail from the closed Carbon River Road

From the short spur trail, back on the main trail we continued up another 0.8 miles toward Green Lake.

Ranger Creek as we neared the lake.

log bridge over Ranger Creek

It was so peaceful at Green Lake, we had a nice lunch break here before returning.

 

Amabilis Mountain

We drove out to the Cabin Creek SnoPark to hike/snowshoe up to the top of Amabilis Mountain and take the loop option back down to the Y. Overall 10.5 miles with 2,100 ft of gain.  The route was groomed up to the top turn around spot. The day started out with some clouds, but turned into beautiful blue skies before we reached the top for the views. We went up wearing micro spikes and staying to the far side of the groomed trail. Coming down, we wore our snowshoes where the loop was not groomed and continued with snowshoes below the Y as the snow had warmed up and gotten sloppy.

View spot along the route before the top. Great views of the Chikamin Peaks, Mt Hinman and Mt Daniel behind Kachess Lake. From before we reached this spot until after completing the loop and re-joining the groomed trail below the Y, we didn't see any other people. 

zoom of Mt Hinman, Mt Daniel and Kachess Lake

zoom of Chikamin Peaks

We took the side trail towards the top of Amabilis, nice view of the south end of Kachess Lake. It was a bit windy up on the top, so we came back here for our lunch break after taking photos on the top of Amabilis.

Pano from the top of Amabilis Mountain.

Followed the rock on top for a better view of the north end of Lake Kachess

zoom of Mt Hinman, Mt Daniel and the north end of Kachess Lake

zoom to the tippy top of Mount Stuart to the northeast beyond the ridge

zoom of Mt Rainier to the southwest

View towards Keechelus Lake and the Snoqualmie Pass area from the groomed turn around area.

On the back side of the loop we had better views of Keechelus Lake and the peaks at Snoqualmie Pass (zoomed in a bit). Pinkham Peak, Silver Peak, Mt Catherine, Granite Mountain and the Chikamin Peaks