Spray Park, Mt Rainier 8/26/2009

Today I awoke, and headed out for a solo day hike at Mt. Rainier National Park. The plan was to head out to the Wonderland trail and take the alternate route to the top of Spray Park and swing by Spray Falls on the way up. Along with taking a couple side routes within Spray Park. I finally got to the trail head around 10am and was on the trail by 10:20 ish. The trail drops fairly quickly and than meanders up and down with a few good little climbs in between the trail head and the Spray Falls junction.

Shortly after the parking lot.

From here it's about .1 miles to the "viewing area" of the falls. I arrived at the viewing area and realized that I could only see half the falls... So I took charge and scoped some crossings and crossed the falls outlet creek... After the PCT section creek crossings just aren't a big deal. Granted this one had some slick rocks and some pole vaulting with my trekking poles included... But I still made it just fine. WOW! The view of the falls was a lot better upstream on the other side of the creek.

Spray Falls.
Spray Falls and I.
After the pictures I pulled out some snacks, crossed back over the stream and started powering up the climb into Spray Park. It was a slight wake up call about keeping a pace up steep hills... Rainier is no mid west park with gracefully climbing trails. The switchbacks are straight and to the point, they climb the hill! After passing some people on the way up, I took the first side trail to the headwaters of Spray Falls.

A stream alongside the trail during the switchbacks to Spray Park.
The first real hint of meadows. The headwaters of Spray Falls side trip is near this corner.

Wildflower shot looking back down the trail. When I got back to the main trail I quickly repassed the people that I passed on the climb and continued on to the next side trail where I wandered back for quite awhile and saw several tarns, tons of flowers, and some close ups of Observation Rock. When I returned to main trail I again passed the groups of people and took another side trail that kind of got iffy and all the tarns conflicted each other, but I wound up near the base of Eagle Cliffs and Observation Rock...

More stair steps... It's the one thing that drives me crazy about rainier...
More angles of Rainier.
A great wildflower plus Rainier shot.
Along the second side trail.
A marmot chilling in the meadows a few feet away.
The barren terrain up the 3rd side trip.
views from near Observation Rock.
About where I turned around below Observation Rock.
Looking across a tundra like terrain towards the Tacoma area.
When route finding on the side trail started to go to hell I headed back down to the main across a snowfield to where the trail started to head down hill into Seattle Park and the Carbon River drainage. At this point I turned around, taped my feet up and headed back down to the parking lot. Where again I passed the same crowd of people... On the last section I wound up running nearly a mile of it... I wound up picking up a fairly aggressive yellow jacket that was buzzing me and constantly trying to land on me to sting me... So I kept running ahead and sometimes I'd lose it for a few minutes, and sometimes it'd still be doing circles around me while I ran! Than after I thought that I had finally lost it, it would come back and I'd jet ahead again... Scary stuff! Especially since I'm deathly allergic to some kinds of bees... Granted I had an Epinephrine shot and benadryl with me, but I don't want to have to use them because it's never fun. I finally lost the bee just before I reached the Parking lot... I got back to the parking lot at roughly 3:20pm and headed home.