Spray Park

We drove up to Mowich Lake in Mt Rainier National Park to hike up to Spray Park and back. Today we hiked 8 miles round trip with 1,500 ft of overall gain. There were ripe huckleberries throughout the forest. There were still some wildflowers in bloom and we saw a mother bear with two cubs (all photos of the bears are zoomed in). Such an exciting day!

Fire weed and Angelica in the forest meadow.

Monkeyflowers and groundsel near the stream.

One of the streams we crossed along the trail in the forest.

We took the short side trail to Eagle Cliff Viewpoint for this lovely view of Mt Rainier.

After going up the switchbacks, the trail emerges from the forest for this lovely view at the lower end of Spray Park.

Another view of Mt Rainier before the trail went through the trees for a short bit.

We saw a mother black bear with her two cubs near the tree line of the meadow.

While we were watching the bears from a distance, they went across the trail, first the cinnamon cub,

then the black cub,

and the cinnamon colored momma bear.

We saw some purple fleabane along the trail edge.

Water in lower Spray Park.

As we hiked through Spray Park we would have off and on view of Mt Rainier and see wildflowers.

There was some lupine still in bloom, along with

paintbrush and fleabane,

bistort,

and lousewort.

Mother Mountain and meadow full of paintbrush and lousewort.

To the far north/northeast, we could see other mountain peaks.

zoom of Mt Baker

zoom of Glacier Peak

zoom of Mount Stuart

We saw a marmot sunning itself on a boulder below this view of Mt Rainier.

zoom of the marmot

It was lovely hiking back through Spray Park, enjoying the views and the wildflowers.

We took the boot path to this tarn with a lovely reflection of Mt Rainier.

This large frog was on the trail near the tarn.

There were many tadpoles in the tarn.

Back in the lower end of Spray Park in a different area, we saw the bears again!

As we headed back into the forest, I turned around for a last look at Mt Rainier from Spray Park.

Along with wildflowers we saw lots of butterflies and bees.

 

some of the wildflowers we saw along the trail today: