June 27, 2012: MRNP surprise-surprise-surprise!

Left early, arrived at the Nisqually entrance at 8:05 with plans to go to 4th Crossing and ski to Cowlitz Rocks/Paradise Glacier. Got to Paradise and the upper parking lot and Paradise Valley Road were closed: surprise, surprise, surprise! Jokes on you, Public! skinned up Dead Horse trail, found Pan Face is close (too melted out at the top) so the only route is up the summer cliff route. Looked at Golden Gate, still skiable, but marginally skinable due to melt out. Had limited time & energy so had an enjoyable time skiing the cornice line back to Dead Horse trail head.

I never ceased to be amazed at how little consideration this park gives to its users/owners. Mt Rainier definitely needs a citizens advisory committee to get them back on target.

Maybe due to evacuation of the Rangers' body today???

According to KOMO high avalanche danger is preventing the retrieval of Ranger Hall's body:
www.komonews.com/news/local/Avalanche-da...anger-160614245.html

Probably the same reason the road is closed, though no indication of the closure on the park's official Twitter feed:
twitter.com/#!/MountRainierNPS

They were repainting the stripes in the parking lot and using 4th Xing for helicopter stuff--normal stuff I was told, I think Ranger Hall was to be transported to Sunrise (Sunrise was closed for that purpose).

So after I got home I went for a motorcycle ride (Ashford-Packwood-Ohanepecosh-Reflection Lakes-home); at Ohanepecosh a friend was working the gate and she said Oh yeah, today's the day their doing striping in the parking lot and using 4th Xing for a helicopter.

AC: Maybe you should cut them some slack. Seems like they might have a lot on their minds these days.

The painters have a 30 day contract to finish all striping in the park, so when a sunny, dry day pops on a Wednesday, they paint. Dont know when a better time is than a Wednesday. These guys aren't exactly TAYers, studying MM5 forecasts all night, so when the nightly news says its gonna be sunny, they make arrangements to be on site at 0600, when (almost) nobody else is out, without giving the park much notice.

The flights were mostly partly in support of the rescue operation, flying supplies up that have been depleted by the huge ground teams that have been staging at Muir/Schurman in the past 8 days. And about 50% of it was the normal annual propane, gear, new solar water melters, etc. that had to be ferried around. Those new solar water melters are projected to reduce park propane use significantly, saving the taxpayers $$$.

4th crossing is used to save John Q Taxpayer $$$ as it is the closest helispot to Muir, cutting down on flight time.