Trip to Mt.Rainier

This post has been pending for long and I got to pen this down only now. Anyways, better late than never :-)
It was my second weekend in Redmond. I joined Arun and Raghuram in their plans of going to St.Helens ,a volcanic mountain about 100 miles south of Seattle. We started at 8 in the morning as it was a 5 hours drive. The drive offered some real breathtaking scenes - snow capped houses, lands covered with snow looked as if they had a blanket of white over them. We were about 55 miles from St.Helens when the roads started becoming tough.


The snow hadn't been cleared properly and there was a huge lump of snow all along the middle of the road. Ours being a short car, it was really difficult to progress.


On the way we saw this lake which was totally frozen that one could walk over it. It was truly a wonderful sight!!



We went a little farther and then owing to the roads,decided that it was just impossible to go furthur. It was already noon and suddenly someone suggested the idea of going to Mt.Rainier instead. Still disappointed that we couldn't make it to St.Helens , we started driving back. All of a sudden at a particular point, the car started skidding even on applying the brakes. It was skidding over the ice and the steering wheel was turned to the left just in time. The car stopped just short of the cliff below. One look below, I was feeling nauseating. Oh my god! Then we chained the tires to prevent any more catastrophies and proceeded furthur.
The road to Mt.Rainier was much better and well cleaned. We proceeded to the Paradise point in Rainier. Once I reached there, I knew why it got its name. It truly looked like Paradise!!


The wonderful hue of the sun over the snow covered mountain and the pine trees all over made it look so beautiful.




We proceeded to scale the mountain. Initially, the snow was not fresh and was hard. It was difficult to climb. But as we proceeded towards the top, the snow was soft and fresh and was so inviting.



Especially near the trees, the snow was about hip-deep. It was fun to sink into the snow and later come out with great difficulty :-)



We spent a lot of time there in the snow and then decided to go to the Jackson observatory before leaving. The observatory was also good. They had telescopes with maps beside which described the name of every peak in the range.



The observatory also had other general information about the mountain. It seems it takes a person two days to scale the entire mountain.



It was 5 PM already and it was beginning to get dark.We started back as it would be dangerous to drive back in the dark. I reached home at about 8.30. At about 9.15, I was fast asleep :-)

BTW, today is Christmas... Merry Christmas everyone!