Photo Friday: Fall hike

- October 06, 2023

Yesterday I played hooky from my writing and went for a little hike to see the fall colors. The weather gods granted us a perfect day.

I picked up my brother-in-law at 7 a.m. It was barely light at that hour, as fog had settled on Seattle. I wondered if we were crazy, but figured the vine maple and other colorful vegetation would still be visible, even if we didn't get good views.

After an hour's drive, we started up the Granite Peak trail at 8:20 a.m. It was chilly enough I wore a sweatshirt for at least the first 15 minutes of the hike.

Sun and mist. The first visual reward came within minutes of the start.

We reached the sun and the color about the same time.

The morning dew still shone on the leaves.

After a couple of miles--and a couple of thousand feet of climbing--we broke out pretty much above tree line. Here, the color came from huckleberries (mountain blueberries) and other alpine shrubs.

Before the final climb, we got a pleasant surprise--not just Mt. Rainier, but a little stream and pools of water.

I couldn't get any good reflections, but the stream, the mountain, and the fall colors made me wonder if we should just stop there!

Mt. Rainier. At 14,411', it really is that much bigger than everything around it.

At about this point, we also got our first look at our goal for the day--the old lookout tower on the summit.

Lucky for us the trail goes around the back and not up those rocks.

There were more meadows and more brilliant foliage higher up, so I was glad we hadn't stopped.

With all our photos and stops, it was shortly after noon when we reached the summit. It appeared that the fog had lingered over Seattle.

Fog hanging in the valleys, but the Olympic Mountains are a clear line on the western horizon.

From the summit we could see all of Washington's major volcanoes--Rainier, Adam, Glacier, and Baker. All but St. Helens, which is harder to see since it got radically shorter back in 1980.

Glacier Peak

The day's hike was about 8 miles and nearly 3700' up and back down. We finished about 3:30, and my knees, along with a lot of other body parts, let me know that was a tough day. But so worth it--what a great set of images to play through my mind all night!