Via the Northern Loop on Mount Rainier. Or rather, cutting the loop by leaving the Wonderland Trail after Mystic Lake for Old Desolate and rejoining the trail on the way to Lake James. Backpacking the full Northern Loop Trail was one of my first outings in Washington State so it was fun to revisit some of those memories!

After gastronomically crashing out in NYC/DC for two weeks, I rallied for one last ski day this season. Some much overdue redemption for an earlier attempt in 2022 although it was one of the worst ski descents in my life quality wise lol. At least it was continuous!

Can’t remember why I came up here since Camp Muir is a relatively uninteresting objective, but still good to check out the area.

This traverse covers the ridge of peaks directly south of Rainier from Stevens to Eagle Peak. I don’t think I’d recommend this one lol, mainly because it was a lot of work for views that didn’t change all that much (although it was cool to see the angle of Rainier change a little bit going west to east).

A solo repeat of the exact same outing from last year, except I actually got the pictures I wanted!

Just soaking in the views of the crevasses up close on this one. I hung back with one of a friend who was having a problem with the altitude and encouraged the other two to summit without else since I had already been up earlier this year. A bit disappointing, but this outing confirmed my ability to make turn around in practice, and was otherwise happy to explore this side of the mountain regardless of the outcome.

Little Tahoma is a satellite peak of Rainier, the pointy thing next to the main summit. I think it looks like a castle made of mahogany. Little T is actually the remnants of what used to be an even bigger volcano; it’s hard to imagine another a couple thousand feet on top of what Rainier is currently.

Mount Rainier is just an absolute unit looming over the Seattle skyline from afar - a 14411’ ruler from sea level if you were curious what that might look like. I’ve always dreamed of what getting to the roof of Washington would be like after first seeing it.