Mountaineering!

I'm baaacckk!!!! That's right. After a long hiatus, I am back on the blog. Chrissy has done a wonderful job filling in the blogger position while I've been away at work. Working 10-12 hour days has left me with very little time to do much else. But don't worry, I will always make time for you guys :)

This last weekend Chrissy's old La Crosse roommates Shauna & Briana came to visit with their boy friends. It was so nice to see them! We definitely had a great time. We wanted to show them what the state of Washington has to offer so we took Shauna and Jeremy for a hike next to Mt. Rainier.

After heading through the small town of Carbonado, we came across a small one lane bridge that spanned from one ridge to another and crossed over the Carbon River. We parked and and walked over to fully experience what this mountain valley. As we were walking, two guys in an old pickup truck approached slowly. You could here the dueling banjo theme softly playing in the background as if we were in the middle of a scene from Deliverance. Much to our relief they simply wanted to inform us that it is mandatory to bring a rock with us to throw over the edge into the water below, preferably the biggest one we could carry. Awesome.

We ended up driving up this crazy dirt access road along the cliff side to get to the trail head. 3/4 of the way up we ran into the snowline. As we progressed it got deeper and deeper. We got to one point where the snow was about 1 & 1/2 feet deep with tracks as narrow as the tires. It started to get a little extreme and we didn't want to get stuck so we decided to drive backwards a half a mile to park. Even though we didn't go all the way, I was impressed by the Hyundai Santa Fe that they rented. It's four wheel drive was pretty impressive, especially for a Hyundai! And I think if we risked it we could have made it all the way.

From this access road we were treated to a beautiful panoramic view of the mount side and the surrounding valley. We took time to fully take in all of the sights and breathe in the pure freshness of Nature. It honestly doesn't get much better than this!

After hiking the rest of the way to the trailhead, we began the hike into the woods. The snow was quite literally all around us. Both everywhere we look and walked, and even falling from the trees as the summer sun was warming the snow capped canopy. Even though we felt like we were in the middle of winter, the weather was wonderfully warming to the point where I could even hike in my tee-shirt. At the end of the trail we were treated to the most pristine snow covered lake that was completely untouched and unmolested by the hands of man; a true winter wonderland. Picture do not do it justice!

I highly recommend everyone get out to enjoy what our planet has to offer. It has such remarkable sights that we often taken for granted. Even if you live in a state that doesn't have cool mountains, enjoy what it does have to offer. In fact, as I was standing on the middle of that snow covered lake, I was imagining one thing that I absolutely love from the state that raised me:

To hold you over until the next post, enjoy this compilation of Discovery Park and our hike to Mt. Rainier: