Mt Rainier | Camp Muir

Looking for great views?  A good day hike?  A good workout?  You can accomplish all this and more  when you hike to Camp Muir.  Camp Muir is the base camp for a summit attempt to Mt. Rainier.  At 10,188 feet, it provides excellent views of the summit itself and also other mountains in the vicinity – Mt. Adam and Mt. St. Helen. 

On a gorgeous Saturday morning (with a very favorable weather forecast for the weekend), our group comprising of 7 people (Adam, Anand, Chris, Itai, Sha, William and I) decided to hike up to Mt. Rainier.  5 members of the group (who have been training the entire summer) were planning on going all the way to the summit.   Itai and I were planning to accompany this group till Camp Muir.  We had decided on leaving Paradise (the trail-head for the hike) at 6 am, so while the “summiters” decided on driving the night before from Seattle (a 2 hour drive), Itai and I left Seattle at 3:15 am!   After driving approximately a 100 miles, we got to Paradise at 5:30 am.  The rest of our group showed up at 6 am and started to get their gear sorted out.   After some breakfast, we finally started the hike at 8 am.

There was still a fair amount of snow at Paradise (approximately 5500 feet) though we made good progress.  About 2 miles into the hike, you get to pebble creek from where its snow all the way to the top.  3 miles into the hike we hit the Muir snowfield which during bad weather (or really warm weather) has crevasses that tend to open up.   We took 5 minute breaks every hour and finally reached the camp at noon (4 hours later).  The weather on the particular day was warm and we just lied down on the rock surface at the camp and baked in the sun for a good hour.  At 1:30 pm, Itai and I decided to head down.  Now comes the fun part – remember all the snow that made coming up a little difficult?  Well, going down in snow is fun – you basically slid down with a trash bag under you bum!  We glissaded down for 45 minutes and reached Pebble Creek; from there we walked back to Paradise – our time to get back to Paradise from Camp Muir was a little short of 2 hours!

We got back to Seattle 3 hours later with a short break for some delicious burritos at Taco Bell. All in all, a very fun filled day.  I am definitely going all the way to the summit next year.

Quite a few photographs were taken, so I will try and put them on the post.  Hopefully, you have access to these photos on facebook. 

1. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90839&id=743158886
2. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2707523&id=7931027
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j40kK0Wj_BY

Rating (on a 5 point scale)

• Adventure – 3.5/5
• Scenery – 4/5
• Difficulty – 3/5
• En route Amenities – 2.5/5 (at Paradise though the trail is very well maintained and regularly traversed)

Mailbox Peak

An interesting name for a hill top (sitting at approximately 4800 feet).  I consider this to be an intermediate grade hike - it is a 5 mile round-trip hike with an elevation gain of 4000 ft.  The last 0.5 mile has a very steep gradient and makes the climb to the top a real pain!

I did the hike along with 5 others people from MSFT and CSCO (Adam, Anand, AK, Chris and Sha) – 4 of these people were training for Mt. Rainier later this summer.  So, with a fairly experienced group, we started off from the trail head at 10:30 AM.  We staggered to the top at about 1:15 PM, covering the fairly uphill climb in a little under 3 hours.  We were fortunate (or unfortunate depending on how you see it) to have only 2 snow patches along the way.

While the Mt. Rainier trainers were lugging 40 pound backpacks, I was carrying a day pack with a few bottles of water and a change of clothes.  All of us signed the memo at the mailbox (yes, there is actually a US mailbox at the top!), relaxed for a while and then headed down at 2 PM.  1.5 hours later we were down at the parking lot.  So, the entire hike lasted about 5 hours making it a good weekend hike.  I had bought a pair of hiking boots from Big 5 for $15 (regular price $40) which served me well for the journey; so did the workout pants and jersey from Reebok that I bought the day before!

Rating (on a 5 point scale)

• Adventure – 2.5/5
• Scenery – 1/5 (Seattle weather did not play along)
• Difficulty – 3.5/5
• En route Amenities – 0/5 (only at the trail head; for the remainder the trail is not maintained)

Tiger Hill

Feels nice to hit the path less traveled.  After Triund, there was a lull as I adjusted to school life at Duke (in Durham, NC).  Now, while in Seattle for the summer, I had the chance to get on a 4 hour hike 30 minutes away from my apartment.  Tiger Hill is a 20 minute drive from downtown Seattle (get off exit 20 on 90E while driving from Seattle) and follow directions to the trail head.  

A couple of firsts with this hike.  One, this was my first hike with family – my wife accompanied me and I was also using my newly acquired baby carrier to haul our one year old daughter.  Two, this would be my first hike in the US (at least after I started blogging).  We had a fairly large group of people – basically about a dozen interns from all the top MBA schools in the country.  Lets see… we had Amanda (MIT), Bill (MIT), Chris (UT-McCombs), Dhruv (MIT), Diane (UV-Darden), Itai (CMU-Tepper), Justin (MIT),  Melinda (Harvard),  Michael (UT Austin), Sujoy (Wharton), Venkat (Duke-Fuqua) and I. 

Amanda

Bill 

Chris

Dhruv

Diane

Itai

Justin

Melinda

Michael

Sujoy

Venkat

The hike is basically a 5 mile roundtrip walk with an elevation gain of approximately 2000 feet.  While the ambience was very pleasant and the weather held up (it was in the late 50 at the top),  the “spectacular” view from the top was marred by a cloud cover.

The highlight of the trip was how our daughter coped with the journey – a little cranky till she got used to the baby carrier but eventually came to terms with it… she even had a decent nap while we trudged back downhill.  

All in all, a good starter hike to discover the Seattle outdoors.

Rating (on a 5 point scale)

• Adventure – 1/5
• Scenery – 2/5
• Difficulty – 1/5
• En route Amenities – 1/5 (only at the trail head)

Triund

A good 2 day trek for starters… Triund is about a good 3-4 hour climb for a fairly fit person (stretches of the trek are treacherous and when coupled with snow & ice, the going can get a little tough). Triund is also the base camp en route to the Lahesh caves and then crossing the Indrahar pass. Our onward trek culminated at Triund, going any further would have required another 3 days.

Hemkund Sahib

Religious place to the Sikhs… a trekking paradise for amateurs. This listing is for the record only… we visited HS almost a year and a half ago. The gory details…