Another day at the office, this time a ‘relaxing’ skin up the Muir Snowfield on Mt Rainier followed by spring corn (yes, in February) down the Nisqually Chutes. Overall we dropped over 4,000 ft, slipping by the toe of the Nisqually Glacier, onto the Nisqually River.

I’ve decided to put together a quick slide show, coupled with some Acoustic Sunrise tunes, rather than show images individually.

NOTE: the below slideshow requires the free Quicktime player. If you don’t have it, download it HERE. If for whatever reason you just can’t play it (64bit Vista machines probably can’t), scroll down to watch it via YouTube. Resolution sucks, but you’ll see how nice it was out.

View more Mount Rainier Photos.

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Last weekend, with no snow to ski tour on and feeling a bit depressed as even the Rockies were getting pounded, some friends and I thought a trail run up Mt Si would be fun. Running, or jogging, nearly 4000 vertical feet is never easy, but the views of Mt Rainier and surrounding Cascade peaks were beautiful.

Mt Rainier Photo, taken from Mt Si

Thankfully we have options like this in Seattle. No snow, no problem.

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The first ski tour of the year is always filled with a bit of anxiety. Like any other adventure, you’re constantly doing a mental checklist of gear on the drive, despite making the effort beforehand (even the night before!) that everything you need is in good working condition and ready to go. I laid all my backcountry gear on the floor, taking note of what I had, and didn’t have.

Let the games begin

Due to relatively little amounts of snow, the destination for our first ski tour was, wherelese, Mt Rainier. With sunny skies predicted and about half a foot of fresh snow, our expectations weren’t all that high but instead hopeful. Arriving at the Paradise parking lot around 9:00 am, we were quite pleased to see most of the ground covered in fresh snow, with the possibility of skinning from the car looking high.

Before I really had time to think about it, our small group began the skin up towards Camp Muir. No matter how many times I ski on or around Rainier (which is a lot) I am always blown away by how beautiful a mountain it is.

Taking very few rest stops, I found myself quickly gasping for air and the legs tired as I attempted to photograph “The Mountain” while keeping up with my buds. Soon I fell into a rhythm though and the Muir snowfield unfolded into a massive powder field. This was going to be good I thought…

My legs kept trying to tell me this was the first ski tour of the year, while my brain was just too enthusiastic about the current conditions (which are rarely that good towards Muir Camp at 10,000 ft) and the fact that despite a very slow start to the ski season here in the NW, we were looking at about 3000 – 4000 ft of very good turns.

And very good turns we did have. So enjoyable they were, we opted for two. Sooner or later though we had to listen to our tired bodies and so the adventure back to car began. A bit of walking here, some survival skiing there and our first day of backcountry was deemed a success.

There are a lot of folks in Washington who tire of hearing Mt Rainier stories, myself (sometimes) included. But on this day, the first turns of the year, it just didn’t matter.

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I could visit Mt Rainier every day of the week, rain or shine, summer or winter and I’d never get bored. It’s simply a stunning mountain that offers such a huge diversity of terrain, flora and fauna that one, especially a photographer, can never grow weary of it’s immense size and minute details. So here’s my first installment of photographs from “The Mountain”.

All pictures shot with a Canon Rebel XT & Canon 17-85 IS lens, coupled with a polarizer filter.

[View with PicLens]

Coming soon…backcountry ski photographs, including a summit ski, from in and around Mt Rainier

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Three hours, three Seattle photographs. Cycling over the Duwamish River to Shilshoe Marina in Ballard for a quick saling race in Puget Sound. Mt Raininer, emerald waters, crimson sky…time to go home.

[View with PicLens]

Another day at the office…

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…which unfortunately I did not find but admittedly it’s hard to go wrong when exploring the flanks of this mighty mountain.

For three days I wandered around Spray Park, a relatively easy hike into the alpine that offers close-up views of the north side of Mt Rainier. Hoping to find that idyllic scene where wildflowers stretch as far as the eye can see, I instead witnessed natures work in smaller doses of stunning shapes, colors and aromas. Fields of avalanche lily; giant red paintbrush and dwarf lupine (or alpine lupine) dotted this extremely fragile alpine environment.

But I have this problem with trying to capture such grandiose landscapes. There’s really just too much, and often because of the grand scale of things it’s nearly impossible to photograph it all. So admittedly, many of the images I captured on Mt Rainier this trip focused on the smaller and more intimate details of this natural environment.

More photographs in my Mt Rainier Photo Album

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