Rainier Gate?

It appears that Rainier has been closing the gate all day during work hours (9-6) but it has been open the rest of the day. So it seems that if you show up before 9:00 you are okay. Can anyone verify if this is the case? I only got one shot at October turns and if I get screwed by the gate I'm boned.

The alternate is Heliotrope, but that looks terrible right now. However any input there though would also be appreciated.

That sounds too methodical to be true; I think gate hours are determined with one of these:

Heliotrope is probably ok now. I was up there on Saturday and it was warm, windy, and wet but it's cooled off significantly since then.

Gate info is posted on the MORA twitter feed twitter.com/MountRainierNPS -- though Verzion signal dies around Ashford and ATT is dead past Eatonville. Monday was the day to go. For October with the high freezing level and rain in the forecast the next few days -- you'll probably need to hike to Pebble Creek in horizontial rain. :P

It was closed during the day on Sunday (26th) due to plowing. According to their website, "nightly closures begin around November 3" "weather dependent"

They also advertise gate closures/openings on their Twitter feed:

twitter.com/MountRainierNPS

They don't post to Twitter early enough, amongst other issues.

Randy, a brief weather window is occurring tomorrow, and I was in the wrong state yesterday.