September 3-5 : Peak Loop/Dege Peak/Berkeley Park - Mount Rainier National Park
Summer holiday
weekends are a challenge when living on the road. Campgrounds get
crowded and fill early, often with more partiers than I can tolerate
(OK, any). I have learned, maybe somewhat counterintuitively, that this can be a good time to head to a
national park. Big holiday
campers don't tend to go to national parks. Parks charge an entrance
fee, have strict restrictions on dogs, and offer campsites that are
usually smaller and more tightly packed together than in most
national forest campgrounds. You can't really spread out yourself out
along the river. Campers at national parks tend to be serious hikers
or people from out of state or other countries who have come
specifically to see the park. They're not there to sit around the campground and party.
So this past Labor Day
weekend I headed down to White River Campground at Mount Rainier, my
local national park. I got there early in the week, Wednesday, a
precaution that proved thoroughly unnecessary as the weather was
fairly lousy. Not terrible, just heavily overcast with intermittent
rain showers. Only one day was bad enough to keep me confined to my
tent. But the splendor that makes it a national park was deeply
camouflaged. Consequently the campground never filled up and on a
couple of those rainy mornings it seemed oddly deserted.
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| View from White River tent |
All of which was
fine with me as I wasn't really ready to hike yet. My knee seemed to
be improving rapidly though, so on Saturday when the forecast called
for a little sun I was ready to try a short hike. Another great thing
about national parks is they tend to have lots of good short hikes
and Mount Rainier has plenty. I chose the Naches Peak Loop, leading
straight off the highway at Chinook Pass, right at the border of the
national park and the national forest. It is a fairly easy three mile
loop, perfect for kids and there were a lot of them. I like kids when
they're enthused and these kids seemed to be having a good time,
especially picking berries.
The sun never did break through the thick
clouds so Rainier itself remained thoroughly hidden. This made it a
good day to experience the aesthetics of forest and meadow, often
lost in the Mountain's splendor. I decided it would be a good place
to take someone looking to experience a great subalpine ecology
without paying the national park entrance fee, recently jacked up to
$25. In fact, since the trail straddles Mount Rainier and the forest
service's William O. Douglas Wilderness, people can bring dogs
halfway around the loop, then head down along the PCT to Dewey Lake.
This hike went so
well I went out again the next day on a four-mile round trip to Dege
Peak out of Sunrise. On clear days the views from Dege Peak are
spectacular, but once again only bits of sun broke through the vast
fog banks, so it was another day to appreciate the smaller things. In
fact this day's highlight was a small girl, four years old she would
later inform me, churning up the rather steep trail to Sourdough
Ridge, smelling the flowers and greeting the passers-by, myself
included. I told her she was doing a great job and she said thank
you. I figured her parents were good for getting her as far as she
was, and was dumbstruck an hour or so later to see her breeze onto
the summit at Dege Peak. When she spotted me she exclaimed “I did
it!”, as indeed she had.
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| Emmons Glacier |
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| Sunrise Meadow |
Feeling no pain
from these modest efforts I went out again the next day, Labor Day.
Not only was it the only sunny day of the weekend, it was the only
decent day in the immediate forecast, so I decided to try the
somewhat more challenging hike out to Berkeley Park. I figured if it
clobbered me I'd have plenty of rainy days to recover. So once more I
was with the crowds ascending the Sourdough Trail, watching as people
peeled off at each trail intersection – to Dege Peak, Fremont
Lookout, Burroughs Mountain, Skyscraper Pass – all trails with great views.
If I were an infrequent visitor I'd be doing one of those as well, but by the time I was descending the trail to Berkeley Park I was the only one
left. I would have the park gloriously to myself for an hour
before a few backpackers came passing through. After that I would see
two other day hikers the entire day, this once again on a lovely
trail on a sunny summer holiday.
As meadows go
Berkeley Park beats the pants off the far more popular Summerland.
For one, it really is a park in that the meadow is rich with trees.
It does lack a view of the mountain but for that you can continue on
to Grand Park - a fine idea - for a big wide view. Mostly Berkeley
Park has Lodi Creek, which has to be the best creek in the national
park. It comes cascading down in full view from Burroughs Mountain
and closely parallels the trail throughout. In a couple of places the
trail comes down to meet the creek, where boulders fallen from the
jagged cliffs high above are conveniently situated for lunch or nap.
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| Berkeley Park |
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| Lodi Creek |
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| Lodi Creek |
Berkeley Park draws
a bigger crowd in flower season, though like most Cascade meadows it
can be very buggy in flower season. (Grand Park can be brutal.)
That's all gone by September though. Yet the meadow was far from dry.
Not only was the creek robust, so were the many springs and seeps
emerging from the still-lush grass. It is truly a place to savor.
After a mile or so the meadow gives way rather abruptly to a
wonderfully spooky patch of old-growth silver fir, decked out in
goat's beard. I've always noticed that this tree is typically thus
festooned but I never focused on it until this rainy week. I began to
research why but have found no answers. The trail descends to one
last intersection with the creek before it begins to climb up to
Grand Park, a bit too ambitious for me on that day. I was weary and
sore as I climbed back out to Sourdough Ridge, but I was not in pain. This is progress.
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