Paradise Winter Hike

 Beautiful cold, sunny day today. We drove up to Paradise at Mt Rainier National Park, thinking of hiking up to Panorama Point. The gate didn't open until almost 10 AM today.
We started by taking the Alta Vista Trail up towards Glacier Vista. The snow wasn't very deep, we didn't need snow shoes, but did use microspikes as some areas were icy. View of the Tatoosh Range from near the beginning of the trail.

 Beautiful day, with clear blue sky. A wonderful winter wonderland.

As we neared Glacier Vista We encounter strong winds. We decided against going up to Panorama Point, but enjoyed the views along Glacier Vista.

 Looking back toward the Tatoosh Range with Mt Adams and Mt St Helens south of them.

Zoom of Mt St Helens peeking over the Tatoosh.

Zoom of Adams peeking over the Tatoosh, here the wind was blowing the loose snow sideways!

After we had lunch, we decided to hike the closed Paradise Valley Road towards Reflection Lakes. By the time we reached 4th crossing, the only prints in the snow were animal prints.  We hiked out until we reached the Lakes Trail and found the trail marking sticks had not yet been placed. We didn't feel comfortable finding our way through the woods in snow without the marking sticks, and didn't think we'd make it to Reflections Lakes and back along the road in the time we had left, so we turned back.

 We enjoyed the snow and ice formations.














The creek at 4th crossing:

I love the hike back along the Paradise Valley Road as we were hiking straight into fabulous views of Mt Rainier.

 Around the hairpin turn in the road, back up to Paradise and the views of the Tatoosh Range.









Back at Paradise, fun day in the sun and snow. We hiked about 5 miles overall with around 1,000 ft of elevation gain.

We stopped at Longmire on the drive down, such a different perspective of Mt Rainier seen here.