Burroughs Mountain
My Dad and Stepmom came in for only about 36 hours last week and on the one day we had together, I mistakenly suggested we drive up to Sunrise in Mt. Rainier National Park. After all, it was the only touristy thing they hadn't done in Seattle since I moved here in 2000 and we would get a pretty early start. I totally underestimated the mileage and missed the White River entrance to the park and to make a long story short, we ended up turning around halfway up Chinook Pass on a fabulous day. So my interest was piqued and I made a mental note to myself that I wanted to return on the weekend.
I got up early on Saturday (Hell has frozeth over) and drove up to Sunrise, deciding to do the Burroughs Mountain hike on the way there. It was a bit chilly out and I'm glad I took one of the many jackets I have in my closet, it would be needed since I would get above 7,500 feet. The hike itself was unremarkable but I'm pissed that I had just missed the 4.6 magnitude earthquke by about 20 minutes. Apparently, the trail I had just walked was damaged and the road up to Sunrise has some significant rockfall. I had actually considered hiking the route in the dark (a full moon was out) but I was a little apprehensive since I wasn't familiar with the terrain and was alone. I hiked a little past Burroughs 3 and my GPS said the round trip was a little over 7 miles (I took some detours). On a weird note, on the way down back to Paradise, I met two park rangers and I made a remark about how fragile the trail seemed to be and how much it would suck to have an earthquake or major lehar up there. Heh.
I took a bunch of pictures but most of them were trash since I had to play with the exposure do to hiking westward in the evening. The salvageable ones can be seen in my Flickr gallery.
