We were planning on heading to the Glacier Vista trail at Rainier National Park for our New Year's snowshoe hike, but a few things got in the way. Makana showed up 2 hours late, then when we got to the check point at Longmire at 10:13am I decided to not just tell them I had chains in my Subaru. So as we were leaving at 10:20am to go rent chains, some guy ran the check point, and a very sad fiasco and a massive man hunt began after the guy shot the Ranger Margaret Anderson. As we were leaving with rented chains from Whittaker Mountaineering the shooting happened and while we were almost back to the park we had to get out of the way of a State Patrol officer speeding to the scene. I was thinking I was going to get in trouble for speeding at the time, but the officer came up on me so fast and blew right past. As we reached the gates of the park, we were turned away. On our way back to return the chains ambulance after ambulance and patrol car after patrol car blew past. Counting at over 8 of them by the time we got an alternative snowshoeing suggestion from Whittaker Mountaineering and purchased a map for the Mount Tahoma Ski Trails. As we headed to the turn off more police vehicles rushed by. All they told us at the gate was an incident happened on the road and the park is now closed. We were thinking a major car accident, maybe a mudslide, in the unlikely event an avalanche blew across the road (Avy danger was pretty low though). Certainly not anyone shooting one of the really nice Rainier Rangers.
Packed the night before.
So as all of this was happening we redirected our trip, even with the wonder of what was going on in the park. We drove out to the Mount Tahoma Trails system and began our hike. I had seen signs about this place and always wondered what was really out there. Apparently a lot of groomed and ungroomed trails. I'm not a huge fan of groom with snowshoes as I found out today, except when it's long steep inclines up logging roads!
We meandered up towards High Hut as our destination, and with a late start we were really only hopeing for a smidge of a view and a place to cook some stew to dip our biscuits into.
At the junction between High Hut and Snow Bowl Hut, we glanced at the map and realized that Snow Bowl Hut was half the elevation gain, but the same distance away. So we headed away from the grand views of Rainier at High Hut to find a nice place along the ridge to Snow Bowl Hut to sit down and cook up stew for Lauren and I.
We cooked up some stew and headed down a little after 3pm, forgetting how much quicker it was to head down a groomed track... So we could of actually made it out to Snow Bowl Hut, but safety, time management and group drive (Makana's friend was dead tired) to reach the Hut was factored in. We figured it would make it a more enjoyable hike overall for everyone if we returned short of a destination.
Lunch!
Sow Bowl Hut
We headed to the restaurant outside the park for dinner, but it was "closed due to a recent incident at the park." We really wanted to know, because cop cars were still flooding towards the park as we headed out towards Eatonville. After we finally got service Lauren was able to do a google search and found information as to
what was going on.
Definitely a tragedy, and hopefully they find her killer in a timely manner.
Update, the murderer's body was found in a ditch nearby the next morning.
