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On Tuesday morning, I woke to find Mt. Rainier had disappeared from my window, as predicted. The sky was overcast, but not raining. I could not wait to get out and see the world, so I left about 8 AM to talk to the park rangers about hiking in the area. They mentioned snow in a few places, which did not bother me. I'm from New Hampshire. I can deal with snow and walking on it. They just smiled. I figured out why later.

I started with a great hike at Kautz Creek.

You can see the wide area carved out by the creek at one point in time. The creek has been minimized to a trickle in the middle, due to a blockage further upstream.

Looking at the water, you can see it's quite brown and looks horribly polluted. It's actually just colored by metals. There is significant geological activity in the area, as you might expect when hiking on a volcano, and that is where these metals come from. There is no significant pollution here.

About a mile from the road, I got to see some of the blockage and devastation that kept the water from making it downstream.

I was standing right in the middle where enormous trees had been tossed around like toothpicks at one point.

Further down the road, it was a great day for a photo at Christine Falls.

However, the further up I went, the more snow appeared. Here's the Nisqually River:

Of course, the snow just got deeper the further up I went. By the time I was at Paradise, the snow was 15 feet deep. They had 120% of their normal snowfall in Paradise. Normally, the snow does not disappear until July, but I'm guessing mid-July, because there's so much melting to do. It was only 39 degrees, and the wind was blowing a bit, so it wasn't particularly pleasant.

Some trails were marked, but of course, all of the normal signs were 15 feet underground. For someone who just survived a very dark, snowy winter, I really did not want to deal with 15 feet of snow. I also understood what the ranger meant now when talking with me about trail conditions!

Fortunately, the road goes downhill and back into the warmth eventually. Here are some pictures from the Grove of the Patriarchs trail. The trees on this trail are well over 1000 years old. The trees were infants when the Rolduc monestary at Kerkrade was under construction.

To get to the Grove of the Patriarchs, I walked next to the beautiful Ohanapecosh River, then over a suspension bridge.

The water is an unusual color because it contains glacial runoff, and it's full of tiny grit from the glacier.

Shortly after crossing the bridge, there is a giant tree which was blown over in 1970, the year of my birth. The base is probably 12 feet high.

The trees are so large, that if you wrap your arms around them, they barely bend. This cedar tree had a deck built around it.

I also got a great picture of a nurse log, something that also reminds me of Joomla. A nurse log is an old tree which has fallen in the woods. Other trees start to grow on top of it, wrapping their roots around the log underneath. The new trees take nutrition from the old log. The old log decomposes over time.

Once the old log has decomposed, the trees may look a bit odd. But you can see where they grew around a log at one point in time, and how that log affected their development.

I recrossed the beautiful river again, and headed back to the hotel. On the way home, it poured rain. Apparently the rain had been chasing me all day long, and I didn't know it. I feel fortunate that I got such a nice day outside, even if I couldn't see Mt. Rainier.