Mt Rainier, Washington State, USA

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Hello Everyone,

I am back on the blog after a long time. Sorry for the long wait.

Mount Rainier is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, and the highest mountain in the state of Washington. It is a large active Volcano located 54 miles (87 km) southeast of Seattle.

Friday, 5th June 2015 : I was boarding my one-stop (Atlanta-Detroit-Portland) flight to Portland, Oregon. I was in utter anticipation for this trip for a very long time. When I sat on the flight to Detroit and busy listening to my music, suddenly it was announced that the flight had some major suction pressure issue so it will be delayed by 2 hours. I panicked and was disappointed. But thankfully I travel with a very good airlines, so I was saved. They gave me a fresh direct ticket to Portland. I was happy and content and back to my plans what to do and what not.
I started chatting with my friend asking him which place we are gonna visit - Mt Rainier or Mt St Helen's. It was a dilemma situation. This was the 1st time in all my trips that I didn't know where I was going. No plans at all. It was a very uncommon situation for me since all my plans are always ready beforehand. But this one was absolutely different. I was about to board my new flight, but I didn't know where I was heading to after I land in Portland, Oregon. After a thorough discussion on-board with my friend, it was finally decided that we will be going to Mt. Rainier.I landed in Portland at around 9:30 pm. My friends arrived at the airport to pick me up and we drove directly to Mount Rainier National Park.



Saturday, 6th June 2015 : The drive to Mount Rainier National Park took us a little more than 3 hours. We entered the National Park around 1:15 am and trying to get a Camp site. It was extremely dark and we could only see the western white pine trees on both sides. It was a beautiful moon-lit night. While we were heading towards the camp site, we spotted the beautiful ice-capped Mount Rainier scintillating on the moon-lit night. Whatever our eyes captured was absolutely ecstatic. I was amazed and speechless.There were darkness all around and all we could hear was the soft stream of waterfall flowing downstream peacefully and at the backdrop we could see Mount Rainier. It seemed the time had stopped. The cameras absolutely failed to capture this winsome sight. Nevertheless we tried our best to try and capture as much as we could with our lenses.
We drove towards on the same path trying to find a camp site. Finally we found the camp site. We parked the car. We got out the tent from the trunk to set it up for the night for us to sleep in the morning. It was quiet chilly weather outside. The camp site was good and had the major facilities : Water and Washroom. After setting up the tent we planned to roam around the whole night, clicking pictures and feel the beauty and calmness of mother nature in utter darkness with the bright moon-lit night. We were driving towards a high altitude where suddenly we saw the scintillating Mt Rainier. So while driving we halted in a few amazing locations to get the maximum view of Mt Rainier. I cannot explain how beautiful it was. May be the pictures can a bit.
We drove to a location where we had to walk a bit to a beautiful waterfall. It was around 3:30 am- 4 am, when it was almost dawn and extremely chilled weather, we saw the beautiful Mt Rainier in the background and the Waterfall flowing downstream. We sat there for sometime to feel the calmness and capture some beautiful moments of the view.
We headed towards the Reflection Lake to view the sunrise glittering over the ice-capped Mt Rainier. This is was a view of a lifetime. The pictures would explain more. We stayed there for another hour and headed back to the camp site at around 6:30 am to get some sleep.
We got up at 12 pm noon. We freshened up, had some lunch that my friend cooked for us from home before we left for Mt Rainier on Friday. We drove to the parking lot from where the hiking trail begins, since we planned to view the beautiful Glacier of Mt Rainier. There are many hiking trails up to the Glacier. So we chose one and hiked along amidst the abundant snow on the ground. The more we were elevating the beautiful the glacier got closer to us and we were more and more mesmerized by its view. We could even view Mt Adam and Mt St Helen's.

When we reached the Glacier, we sat there for like an hour just to breathe in to the ecstatic beauty of the surrounding, the snow, the cold breeze, the beautiful shades of green spreading widely across the mountains, just took me to another new world. After this we drove back to Portland with the Sunset in the backdrop.



PS : What I have seen and what I have in the photos doesn't make so much justice to the beautiful Mt. Rainier. But yet I tried to click as best as I could. Wow, I seriously had an experience of a lifetime.

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Photos

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The Beautiful mirror image of Mt Rainier.

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The Mt Rainier Glacier at the backdrop