The Mountain

On my last full day in Seattle, we went to "The Mountain", or as we non-Washingtonians call it, Mt. Ranier. It's an impressive sight when it's "out", but even when it disappears into the clouds it's impressive.

At our first stop, we read the following sign. The print is very small, but the gist is that debris flows and global outburst floods can happen at any time. If you hear prolonged rumbling or an earthquake occurs, move quickly uphill, away from the rivers and streams. That instilled a lot of confidence in the day.

Here are some of the pictures I took. Here it's disappearing in the fog. We got as high as 5000+ feet, the mountain is 14,000 feet.

To get this shot of the waterfall, I had to walk down a dirt trail with some rock steps. Going down was easy, it was going back that was hard, but so worth the trip.
I'm always fascinated by the fact that trees and plants will take root wherever possible. Here, this tree is growing out of a rock.
Another mountain view.
We had hoped to see some wildflowers along the way, but as you can see winter left late this year and the wildflower fields were covered by the snow.
Unfortunately, I missed the best picture of Mt. Ranier ever. When we were going into our descent into Seattle, I saw the top of the mountain that had disappeared in the clouds. We were above the clouds, which looked like a blanket of snow surrounding the mountain. I was so in awe that I didn't think of getting my camera out of the bag and snapping away. Oh, well, maybe next time.