JK spent all last weekend climbing up by Anacortes with my erstwhile mountaineering classmates, so I was left to my own devices. Since the weather looked promising, I contacted Gabi and joined her and a group of the Seattle Hikers for a trip to Rainier. Yes, another trip to Rainier. I’ll never get enough of that mountain.

This time Mount Rainier was covered in all sorts of lenticular clouds that looked like UFOs hovering above us to take us away.

We headed up to Mazama Ridge and ambled along, oohing and aahing at the views, dropped down to Reflection Lake, and circled back up to Paradise. In the heat and wet, heavy, sloppy snow, hiking up the gently sloping Paradise Valley Road ended up feeling more tiring than rest-stepping up Aaron’s signature (or so I’ve gathered :D) steep hill earlier in the day. The good news is that the snow is melting and summer is on its way!

Perfect weather, beautiful views, and a great bunch of hikers. Regardless of what Dr. Phil has to say about it, meeting people from teh intarwebs just plain rules.

A thing that certainly does not rule is forgetting sunscreen. You would think I would have learned after burning my lips on our trip to Camp Muir a couple of weeks ago, but no. The day before this hike I spent the afternoon on a sailboat on Lake Washington with not a drop of sunscreen on my face, and on the hike I diligently applied and reapplied gunk all day but neglected to cover my ears, neck, chest, and, curiously, one thin, straight line down my nose. I am officially stupid and am paying for it by looking like a peeling Freddy Krueger.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Hiking, Mount Rainier. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.