Mt. Rainier NP Finale

On the day we moved from the east side of the park to the west side, we planned only a few stops. First was to Narada Falls…

… where a brief blast of sunshine let me capture a faint rainbow at the base of the falls -

Next up was a short hike (3 1/2 miles total, but 1200 ft of elevation gain)…

… with the first hint of fall coming (in August!) -

The creek carved some beautiful cuts through rock -

We passed an interesting formation, that reminded me of a certain “sorting hat” :)

It was a drizzly day…

… so I didn’t take many pictures along the way. Bloucher Falls…

… was just a prelude to Comet Falls…

… which drops an impressive 380 ft!

We left this hike with magnificent Ponderosa Pines towering over us -

The next day we were taking on the Skyline Loop trail, but these were the conditions as we approached the trailhead -

As we were trying to admire the wildflowers…

… a young marmot waddled by -

Since we didn’t have any big vistas…

… I focused my attention on what was up close -

Bird’s Beak Lousewort

And yes, it was pretty damp walking in a cloud.

I loved how the Lupine leaves were lined with dew -

For those of you dying to know, that’s Pink Mountain Heather on the right in the pic above.

Some interesting rock formations, along with large snow banks, would suddenly appear out of the mist -

After reaching Panorama Point and seeing nothing, we started heading down, and came out from the fog…

… to find even more wildflowers we hadn’t seen before!

Mountain Monkeyflower

Beargrass

Magenta Paintbrush

Okay, okay… so you’re not as enamored of the wide variety of subalpine flowers as I am. How ‘bout a nice stream tableau?

Tired of flowers, you say? Well, here’s a marmot family -

(be sure to enlarge)

We were astounded by the volume of their whistles echoing off the cliffs.

This Black-tailed Deer was grazing…

… just above Myrtle Falls -

This was the view I was thinking of seeing on that hike…

… but I’ll happily settle for this -