4th of July at Rainier National Park

Ian organized a 3 day weekend camping trip at Rainier National Park. We car pooled with them and setup camp Friday around noon and ate some sandwiches at the campsite. I was surprised to see how nice the campsite was. Each tent spot was surrounded by a patch of forest that was isolating it from the other tents. That way it felt almost like we were camping by ourselves despite being in a rather large campsite. Each spot has a fire pit where you can cook your food as long as you buy/bring wood. There was even bathrooms with drinkable water, and even toilet paper... 5 star luxury camping if you're asking me. Only downside was probably the swarms of mosquitoes. Not that much of a problem for me as there was plenty of honeypots around ;).
From left to right: Melvin, Allen, Ian, Janel, Andy, Kevin and Michelle. Missing: Anne, Jason and myself.


We then spent the afternoon on a short hike to Comet falls. We almost missed the falls as we stopped there:


To realize that we had to walk a few steps more to get to see this one: the real Comet falls !


We had a nice evening around the fire, barbecued lots of salmon, drank a few local brews and some bourbon and went to bed. Next morning at 4:45 Ian and I were up for some sunrise photography action. We drove straight to Reflection Lake and got some very nice shots of Mount Rainier.


A few hours later we drove to Paradise, which is the starting point to climb up Mount Rainier and deserves its name: the view is gorgeous. We then climbed for like 2 hours in snow until we got tired and decided the view would not improve by going higher.

Looking up towards Mount Rainier:


Looking south, towards Oregon we can see mount Adams to the left and Mount Saint Helens to the right (Mount Hood is hidden in this picture).


Once we arrived down the place was literally packed with visitors. It was one of the most fantastic hikes I've done in term of ease of access and quality of the view. I must admit that hiking in the snow in July felt quite good.


We came back to our campsite and met Jason that had just drove up to join us. M, Andy, Kevin and Jason went on another "short" (it was a lot longer than the ranger had told us) hike for the afternoon while Janel, Ian and myself slacked at the camp. We prepared the fire for our 4th of July's dinner (Melvin's first as an American citizen). We had a fun night around the fire, playing with sparklers, eating sausages and chatting.

You can find the rest of the pictures here, or read about it with more pictures on Ian and Janel's blog.