Had a fantastic time on this hike with Brian and Rick: an eight mile hike on Mt Rainier to Carbon Glacier.

The Carbon Glacier is distinctive--it's both the largest glacier in the US (outside of Alaska's mammoth glaciers), with about 2/10ths of a cubic mile of ice (or 0.8 cubic kilometers). Carbon Glacier is also the lowest glacier in the lower 48, coming down to 3600' into midlevel forests. It's not what I think glaciers should look like. On top of the ice is a layer of rock and dirt, with plants growing here and there. We didn't get very close it: every ten minutes or so, huge boulders would come tumbling down the face, cracking open on the rocks below with great noise and effect.

We had hoped to get a view of Mt Rainier, but it was fairly cloudy, so we were only able to see up maybe halfway up. Rainier is such a distinctive shape when you see it from afar (here are some pictures I took one day this summer), but when you're up close you lose that shape and the mountain becomes a big huge wall of snow, ice, and rock. It's huge--14,410' or 4392m--and it feels it.

It was also an wildly colorful hike; the vine maples and devils club in particular were turning yellow and red. But the biggest surprise of the day was the mushrooms, all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors, everywhere. I bet some were good to eat, but we weren't trying at all (and besides, it *is* a national park. No picking.)

It was a great hike, scenic and interesting in quite a few ways.

Click here to go to the first picture.