Monday, July 24, 2023
On the only bad weather day of our trip we hiked up to Comet Falls and Van Trump Park.
The third day of our Mt. Rainier trip was the only one with a less-than-great weather forecast. We knew it would definitely be cloudy and possibly rainy. Originally we had planned to hike to Indian Henry’s Hunting Ground, but with the forecast we decided to change our plans and hike the trail to Comet Falls, then keep going up to Van Trump Park.
Crossing a chasm where Van Trump Creek flows:
This is a well-traveled trail and it’s very rocky:
With all the rockslides around here we saw some cute pikas:
The trail travels upstream along Van Trump Creek:
The trail has slid down the hill here:
This crib ladder was constructed by the Washington Trails Association to negotiate this slide area back in 2012:
See the pika?
A peek at a waterfall through the trees:
Creek crossing:
Just upstream from this footbridge is Bloucher Falls:
And then a bit further down the trail is Comet Falls. Very pretty!
Greg had fallen way behind so he could photograph the pikas. I waited for him to catch up, but he didn’t, so I continued up the trail towards Van Trump Park:
I reached a junction and turned right to Van Trump Park:
The clouds were thick and they covered the summit of Mt. Rainier, but I could still see the bottom portion:
This is supposed to be a maintained trail, but it wasn’t:
Views stretched further than I thought they would considering the weather:
Wildflowers were abundant!
The official trail ends at the bottom of Van Trump Park:
An unofficial user trail continues through the meadow at Van Trump Park. It’s very pretty here:
Mt. Adams barely visible in the distance:
I wandered around admiring the flowers and taking pictures. Greg still hadn’t caught up, so I sat down for a snack. He finally arrived, but didn’t have much time for photos because we felt our first rain drops. We started heading back down at 11, and by 11:30 the rain was pretty steady. By that time, though, we were back in the protection of the trees, and the rain only lasted about half an hour. We passed Comet Falls and kept heading back to the car:
Due to the crummy weather we drove 15 minutes up the road to the Paradise Inn where we could hang out someplace dry. We went to the quieter upstairs area where we found some comfy chairs to sit in:
Up here we also had a great view of the beautiful handpainted lamp shades:
Gaia stats: 5.9 miles, 2,160′ elevation gain
