Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Beautiful Rainier

Katie had a youth activity on Saturday at Rainier.  I agreed to drive up and then went for a snowshoe trip while she was sledding.  It was an incredible day up there.  You get days like this 2-3 times a year so I was tickled to be up there.

Here is Katie at the top of the sledding hill.IMG_2027

I went on the most crowded trail because I was by myself.  There were hundreds of skiers and snowshoers going up and down the mountain so I had lots of company.  I asked another walker to take a picture of me with Rainier in the background.IMG_2056

Here you can see Mt Saint Helens and Mt Adams.  This is the first time I have seen this view from Rainier.  You have to get up above the treeline to see this.

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An Avalanche.  This happened about 10 minutes before I walked up.  The wind direction had changed this day and the ridges had loaded up with blown snow.  I saw 3 avalanches this day.  You normally don’t see then because you normally can’t see very far at Rainier!  After I got above the tree line it was blowing like Idaho Falls in the winter.

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It was like this all day long.  Not a cloud in the sky and lots of sun.  You can see to the left how the snow had piled up from the wind.IMG_2081

2 comments:

Kristi said...

Beautiful! I'm glad you got to Snowshoe on a day like that!

Mom said...

Hard to tell who had more fun, you or Katie. The scenery is incredible! The photographer did a good job too.