September 28. 2003
Our friends, John and Teri, celebrate each year around the beginning of October with Tatoosh Day which involves a visit to Mt. Rainier National Park and a hike up the Tatoosh range. For the last several years we had received photos of the family in front of Mt. Rainier from the great views the Tatoosh offers. This year we tagged along.
We began the day at Reflection Lake just outside of Paradise. It was a picture perfect day when we geared up and headed for the Pinnacle Saddle trail.
The trail is 1.3 miles and gains about 1000 feet of elevation. We were surprised that Zara did such a great job of hiking the trail, she made it about a mile before finally wanting to be carried and then wanting down again 10 minutes later. We arrived at the saddle in short order.
We lunched in the meadow and figured we were pretty much done since we had a four-year old hiker with us. To our surprise we were told that we were heading up Pinnacle Peak (5650'). The "hike" looked much harder from here on, there was a trail across some talus at the start but then it turned to low-angle rock then exposed, high-angle rock at the gully to the summit.
The climbing began and in 40 minutes John and Zara were at the summit. Here are the summit shots of all of us:
We spent some time on the summit snacking (the giant avocado was part of that), shooting photos and resting up for the down climb. The descent was via the same route and a bit tricky for the first 100'. After that when we hit "trail" it felt pretty good and the hike back down the actual trail was welcome. A pretty spectacular way to spend what could be the last good weekend of the Northwest summer.