Glacier Basin Trail – Mt. Rainier National Park

Today’s seven mile hike was wonderfully scenic, albeit a bit more snowy than we expected.

Earlier this week, Jay and I scouted out the Glacier Basin Trail from my favorite hiking guide for hiking Mt. Rainier National Park. We even checked on the trail conditions to make sure it was a reasonable expectation to reach our goal of seeing the Glacier Basin Camp.

In short, two valuable lessons were learned.

Lesson #1: When the trail forecast calls for 30% snowy conditions, it’s bound to be the highest elevation of the hike.

It was, and none of us had gaiters, trekking poles or crampons to help us trapeze the snowy trail. We managed, but it was a bit more difficult without these essential mountaineering items.

I hypothesize that with this gear, I would not have spent as much time sprawled out on the snow. Snow is cold, even in July.

Lesson #2: Sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen!

I should have learned the sunscreen lesson on my whale watching tour  last weekend, but alack. We all have red farmer’s tans on our left arms and now sit around the living room with taut, stinging sunburnt faces.

On a side note, summer has finally hit Tacoma (today it was 82). Since our house isn’t equipped with an AC, as the local climate doesn’t really call for it, the obvious solution for our mandatory sunburn cool-down is a big batch of Sunday evening margaritas. Call it a post-Mountain Margarita and make it a tradition. We just did.

  Regardless of our snowy slip ‘n’ slide defined hike, a great time was had by all.

Mt. Rainier National Park is never a disappointment. The season should remain fair for another 8 weeks or so. Hopefully we’ll get in several more hikes, with sunscreen, before fall!