Mt Rainier Paradise - Thank You!
Saturday was sunny with high light clouds, warm temperatures, and mild wind. Our group of 4 climbed up toward the Muir Snow Field with hundreds to thousands of other skiers, snowboarders, and snowshoers. We turned around at 8000'. There was zero to 2" of light snow on a light breakable crust. Skis ran mostly on the crust. It was "challenging" for some of us (me). Good skiers made nice linked S-shaped turns.
Later in the day we skied Mazama Ridge down to the paved Valley Road. The snow was about 4"-6" deep, soft, no crust, and much easier to ski.
We want to thank the Rainier Park staff who were great! We passed through the Longmire gate at 9:15am and the Paradise parking lot appeared to be full. The Narada Falls parking lot appeared to be full too. The staff parked cars as tightly as possible including places marked for no parking. I heard someone call it "creative parking." The staff we talked to were cheerful and helpful. Thank you. You made a lot of adults and children very happy.
The park has been very good this winter in providing access, even on days I would have thought they would have closed the gate to Paradise. They did close for something like two weeks when they got 100 inches of new snow accumulation--the snow walls along road going up when they opened were actually at bit scary, especially the upper left side of Frog Hollow.
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