Trailing Clouds of Glory

After I cut my trip short and missed a trip through Mt. Rainier on my return trip from Vancouver, I convinced Leslie to take a day off from work to tour Mt. Rainier since we hadn’t done so this summer and parts of it were already closing for the year. We usually start our round-the-mountain tour with Sunrise, but Leslie wanted to visit Chinook Pass since she hadn’t been there for years. I don’t think I’ve ever approached the mountain from that direction, so I got a new view of it:

Truthfully, at first I didn’t think that could be Mt. Rainier at all. I can’t remember ever seeing it seem that small.

It was reassuring to see it in its fully majesty when we backtracked and drove up to Sunset, or at least to the major viewpoint leading to Sunrise.

Of course, even this approach doesn’t make Rainier look as imposing as it does from the West Side, from Tacoma or Seattle, but it certainly looks more imposing the closer you get to the Sunrise Visitor’s Center.

This shot was taken a short ways up the trail we usually walk

where you can get an even better view of the mountain, but we didn’t have as much time as usual because we’d first driven up to Chinook Pass.

The weather on the top of Rainier can be dangerously variable, but on this day it seemed to be .

trailing clouds of glory. It was never clear whether these clouds had just got hung up on the mountain or whether they were the result of evaporation from the glaciers themselves. There certainly weren’t any clouds to be seen anywhere else.

Though I suspect I would have appreciated these mountains even more after a day spent in the desert, it would be difficult to enjoy them more than I already do. Living in Seattle for much of my life, we always felt it was going to be a good day when we could see Rainier standing guard over us in the distance. It certainly is a good day when I can hike/drive around the mountain.