Mount Rainier – Paradise

August, 2018

Today’s adventure will take us up to the Paradise Inn and Visitor Center on the side of Mount Rainier.

First, let’s take a look at where we are and where we’re going.

Google-Earth aerial view of Mount Rainier

Above … the mountain.  The close-up aerial view (below) shows you the circuitous roadway that will take us to Paradise.  The squiggly red lines in the lower left corner are the campground (the yellow star is my campsite).  The RED triangle is a view point that I’ll show you here in just a bit.  Even in this aerial photo, the sheer drop-off at that view point is impressively evident.  And finally, after a NUMBER of hairpin turns and more drop-offs (some with no guardrail), we will get to Paradise, in the upper right corner of the photo below.

 

Isn’t this mountain country gorgeous!?

The road in the photo above is part of the road up to Paradise.  I pulled off to the right here and parked in a wide spot, then walked across the road.  Driving UP this specific part of the road wasn’t too scary since I was on the right hand side of the road with that sizable rock wall next to me, but coming back DOWN was a whole different story with that small rock wall next to me that wasn’t even as high as my tires were!

Even with that small rock wall, I was terrified; that small rock wall would not have held my truck on the road had another vehicle come up the hill and smacked into me (there were semi trucks running this road delivering goods and services for the park and for construction projects).  As it was, there was no other traffic when I drove back down this part of the road and so, I’ll be honest with you, I drove on the wrong side of the road all the way down this stretch, right along that taller wall … whew.  I was going slowly enough that, had another vehicle come up in that lane, then I would have pulled over into “my” lane, but as long as there was no other traffic I figured “my” lane was any darned lane I wanted!  I sure wish I didn’t have this fear, but it’s just the way it is I guess.

Here’s that view point that I promised to show you … a perfect view of Mount Rainier!  From the roads I’ve driven here so far, this is without question my favorite view of the mountain.

This photo above was also taken from that view point, looking up a glacial moraine.  The bridge in the photo is part of the road you take to get up to this view point.  The Nisqually River runs down the valley now, under the bridge … it flows from the Nisqually Glacier on Mount Rainier all the way down to Puget Sound and then out to the Pacific Ocean.

While I was walking around taking photos at this view point, a fellow standing near me started chatting with me and told me he had been coming up here almost every year since he was a boy more than 50 years ago.  I asked if he had noticed changes.  He shook his head and stood there a moment or two and finally said “when I was a boy, the glacier came all the way down to the bridge.  They had to rebuild that bridge several times because the glacier kept messing with it.  Now … well, they haven’t had to rebuild the bridge in years.”  I looked at him, his eyes were moist, and he continued, “I have pictures that my parents took of me from this same spot and the glacier was right there.  Now it’s gone.”

A woman standing on the other side of him (who wasn’t with him) said, “oh but this happens all the time.  It’s happened before.  It’s perfectly normal.”  He turned his head and just stared at her.  His mouth was agape.  I truly held my breath since I could feel his tension and I wasn’t real sure what he was going to do or say.  After quite a while he said to her, “Do you not read?!”  She was obviously stunned.  He said, “Do you not freaking READ?!”  And then I couldn’t help but say something too since I was just about as stunned as he was by her statements and by her ignorance.  Looking directly at her I said, “No this doesn’t happen all the time and no this isn’t normal.  In the past, these changes have taken thousands of years, not 50 years.  Where are you from and what sort of bizarre news do you watch?  The fish are dying, entire rivers have dried up, wildfires are more and more common because there’s less water, plants are dying, mammals are dying, the air quality is getting worse quickly, all in less than 50 years, and it’s happening all over the world, and you think this is NORMAL?!”  She turned beet red and walked silently away.  He hugged me … a good long hug.  And then he said with a chuckle, “thank you, I thought I might have to kill her.”  I know he meant that as a joke, but I also know how bizarre it is to realize that some people don’t see (or don’t want to see) what’s right in front of them.  Ignoring something is one thing, but seeing it happen in such abnormal ways and then still claiming it’s normal is really crazy.

[I’ve thought about deleting the conversation above because some of you might find it “political” … these changes aren’t political, they are happening right in front of us.  For those of us old enough to be watching the earth change so quickly, it’s frightening and sad.]

But a really cool thing happened at this view point too!  These folks in their orange t-shirts were walking the sides of the road in the ditches, poking around, looking in the bushes, poking at the ground from time to time.  I finally couldn’t stand it any longer and walked over to one woman and asked (I hope nicely) what she was doing in the ditch?  She laughed and said “now THAT’s a direct question!”  Turns out there is a crew with one full-time park employee, a few part-time summer employees, and a few volunteers (usually college kids doing work towards a degree) who, each year, walk both sides of every road in Mount Rainier National Park seeking and pulling out all invasive plants that have grown from seeds/plants brought in on tourists’ vehicles.  With snow blanketing the area in winter, this work is done usually from late May through the end of September.

So that was all very interesting.  But then I wanted to get on up the road and get to Paradise!  So I jumped in my truck and on I went.

Up the road a ways I pulled off to the side for a photo-op of the trees and the park sign.  You can see the type of trees has changed.  We’re just a mile or so from Paradise and we’re now in sub-alpine forest, not too far from the tree line.

 

Photo above, the Paradise parking lot at about 10am on this weekday.  The Visitor Center is on the left, with huge windows on the side of the building that faces the mountain.  The parking lot is many times larger than what’s shown in the photo.  By 11am it was packed.  That RV was the only RV I saw up here which surprised me.

A short walk away from the parking lot led me to this field full of autumn color.

 

 

 

Off to one side of the Visitor Center is the administration building above.  The construction equipment on the right is there because they are refurbishing the Paradise Inn (still open for guests during construction).

The “back” side of Paradise Inn (often called Paradise Lodge or the grand lodge).

On one website, a woman wrote this about the Inn:  “It’s impossible not to be charmed by the grand lodge, with huge stone fireplaces at each end of its great room, shining fir floors, and hand-painted lampshades dangling among crisscrossing beams overhead.”

A German carpenter spent the winter of 1919 at the lodge carving much of the furniture, building a piano, and crafting the 14-foot grandfather clock.

The photo above (date unknown) shows the side of Paradise Inn that faces the mountain.  If you stay here, be sure to get a room on this side of the inn!  The road to Paradise is plowed and kept open all year round.  The perfect room might be waiting just for you.

Does anyone know what year those cars are?

I did make it back down the hill to my campsite after today’s adventure.  In fact, I drove back up to Paradise (and down again) twice more during this week.  I wondered if repeat trips would work out some of the fear … and they did.  The fear of the drop-offs was still there even on the third trip up and back, but at least it wasn’t sheer terror anymore.  I guess there’s hope. 🙂