Fine Hike at Mount Rainier

Went hiking at Mount Rainier with my friends Dick and Wilma the other day.  Beautiful day, massive mountain.  The sheer mass of Rainier, and its isolation from other peaks, make it truly outstanding.  Every time I see it up close, "Wow!" is the instinctive reaction.

But, as almost everywhere here in the West, it's dry.  This is Frozen Lake.  Normally it would be much larger and deeper than this, and might even still have a few chunks of ice around.  But not this year.  This is actually an artificial lake, with a dam off to the right.  It's the water supply for the Sunrise area.  Gettin' a little sketchy.  But the season is almost over...Sunrise is closed by October...and precipitation is on the way!

Nice shot of the mountain with a moraine and an alpine meadow.  Some friends hiked up here in late June and the countryside was green with scads of wildflowers...just the way it should be now, two months later.  Flowers are long gone.

Our trail ascended numerous talus slopes.

Volcanic outcroppings, remnants of long ago eruptions.  Looks a bit like Mordor.

Rainier, being so high and standing alone, is a prime spot for the development of lenticular clouds.  A parcel of air, not quite saturated, cruises toward the mountain, rises when it encounters the peak, cools, and condenses into a cloud.  On the other side of the mountain the air sinks, dries out, and ceases to be a cloud.  In the weather business we call these lennies.

Closeup of the lennies and some of the glaciers on Rainier...still massive, but shrinking.

This fire lookout was built in the early 1900s.  There's a panoramic view from here, and though satellites and  other equipment are mainly used to detect fires now, this spot is still used from time to time and has a standard Osborn Fire Finder.

The two lennies have merged.

The valley below, at about 6800 feet elevation, is tundra like you'd find at sea level in the Arctic.

Whitebark pines, hardy trees that grow at timberline throughout the West.