Hiking the Westside Road in Mt. Rainier National Park is one of my favorite places to go. There is rarely another soul out there, yet it still feels pretty wild because the road is closed to automobiles. If I had my cross country skis it would be even better because the grade is just about perfect where you can just coast all the way back down after making the long trudge uphill. My friend Tim from Zion was up visiting his parents in Graham just as I was up visiting my mom in Eatonville. Tim came over for New Years Eve to play games and we decided to try to do a hike a few days later. Naturally I chose the West Side Road. As far as adventure goes, this was not a very adventurous hike. There was plenty of snow on the ground with Tahoma Creek rushing right next to us, but mostly this was just a walk through snow. We did not have all day to make the trek, so our goal was to make it up to the pass near the trail to Lake George and Gobbler's Knob. We achieved that by passing by the only true obstacle the whole way which was Tahoma Creek partially running over the road where it was washed out. The only difficult part of this was just keeping the feet dry.
The main scenery we saw all day was a road cut with very large trees dusted in snow. It made for an enjoyable sight given that we had not had any snow down at the lower elevations yet this year. Well it turned out to be an enjoyable day and it was good to catch up with Tim. I knew in the future we would have to find something more adventurous to do.
Hiking the Westside Road in Mt. Rainier National Park is one of my favorite places to go. There is rarely another soul out there, yet it still feels pretty wild because the road is closed to automobiles. If I had my cross country skis it would be even better because the grade is just about perfect where you can just coast all the way back down after making the long trudge uphill. My friend Tim from Zion was up visiting his parents in Graham just as I was up visiting my mom in Eatonville. Tim came over for New Years Eve to play games and we decided to try to do a hike a few days later. Naturally I chose the West Side Road. As far as adventure goes, this was not a very adventurous hike. There was plenty of snow on the ground with Tahoma Creek rushing right next to us, but mostly this was just a walk through snow. We did not have all day to make the trek, so our goal was to make it up to the pass near the trail to Lake George and Gobbler's Knob. We achieved that by passing by the only true obstacle the whole way which was Tahoma Creek partially running over the road where it was washed out. The only difficult part of this was just keeping the feet dry.
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