(written on October 14th from notes taken previously)
We woke up this morning to exactly what I was hoping for. We had been stymied in all of our efforts the night before to find a place to build a fire by the river, but my last hope was that we might be able to find a place to to wake up to a view of Mount Adams, if it happened to be a clear day.
I didn’t tell my mom what my plan and Hope was, hoping to surprise her with the view in the morning after a long night of disappointing efforts.
Gratefully, upon waking up, I peeked out the window and saw Mount Adams fully uncovered and ready to be seen. 🥳
I tried to be nonchalant and not rush it, just slowly doing my thing while trying to block my mom’s view out the windows of the mountain. Finally, when it was time to get up for good, I put my body in the way of her getting out until the very last second so that she could see Mount Adams across the valley from where we had parked.
Fun little surprise. Yeah 🙂.
We took some pictures at a handful of different angles, and then decided to head back up the road the way we came to head up to Rainier.
It wasn’t too long going back up the road we had come before we ran into a beautiful little side waterfall that had a little out of the way entrance which we could have stayed at last night, but it was totally invisible to us driving in the dark.
We headed north on a new road, as We didn’t have to backtrack very far, coming out of the Foothills of St Helens and Adams Aunt getting gas on the highway that runs between Rainier and St Helens.
I was doing some JustAnswer work, As much as I could, at least, with the reception and internet going in and out. After a while, we took A road north coming in on the Southeast side of Rainier.
It was partly cloudy earlier in the day, but on the Rainier side of the highway, it was a lot more cloudy than on the St Helens side, so we we’re a little nervous that we might not get a chance to see Rainier.
Our concerns about the clouds proved to be true, but we still passed beautiful scenery as we wound our way up the road toward Paradise. We passed a beautiful Lake that, had the peak bin visible, would have been perfect for taking pictures of the peak with the reflection in the lake.
But it wasn’t to be, so we headed the rest of the way up to Paradise. At Paradise, we stayed parked for a little while. It was absolutely jam-packed, a throng of people in cars absolutely everywhere. Felt like the whole mountainside was a parking lot, and that’s not really an exaggeration.
But we still found really beautiful scenery to take pictures of. The colors in the little valley one side of the throng of people in cars were absolutely gorgeous– wildflowers and trees with their leaves changing colors, bushes and everything else all changing colors. It was super beautiful.
Off in the distance, there was a really cool looking waterfall that looked like it was coming over kind of a big domed Rock.
We probably waited there for maybe 20 or 30 minutes hoping that maybe there was a chance that the clouds would clear, but eventually giving up and starting our descent through the other side of the loop.
As we were descending, we noticed a really beautiful waterfall cascading down A super steep super skinny Canyon. I’m talking like maybe 40 or 50 ft across.
Beautiful little waterfall right there in the heart of the insanely commercialized Paradise visitors area.
As we were descending down toward Longmire to leave Rainier Park Aunt find a place to camp, we passed narada Falls and decided to stop.
Boy am I glad we decided to stop! Narada Falls turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous Falls. It started out being one of those ones that’s kind of like a just touristy parking lot, big old building with bathrooms and other comfort stuff, fences and trails and what not, Pat it was still beautiful. I was able to take some great pictures right off one of the cliffsides by scrambling over to the Cliff Edge and down a bit. A little sketchy, but not too bad.
Then of course there was the main place that we could take pictures where the fence was built for people to lean against and just stare at the beauty of the waterfall.
But I noticed that there was a way that you could get behind the falls, that the rock had receded enough to have a little bit of a cave behind it, so I decided to see if there was a way down that wasn’t too crazy.
Gratefully and wonderfully, maybe only 100 ft down the trail from the main fence area, there was a little path down the side of the slope to the river below. It Was a little bit of a scramble, especially at the end when it was really slippery, but not too bad. And once I got down, there were enough rocks in the middle of the creek to make it so that I could cross the creek without having to walk through it, as I didn’t have my water shoes on.
So I crossed to the other side, made my way through the slippery rocks, through the midst of the waterfall, and in behind. It wasn’t a very big cave behind it, but it was definitely big enough to have a really cool view of the entire Falls as it came crashing down in front of you. And since there wasn’t a whole ton of water, you could see out the falls in every direction where it was coming down, so it was just like a partition of water between you and the outside.
Super beautiful.
I took a bunch of pictures and some video, And then figured I had better head back, as I didn’t want my mom waiting too long.
Amazingly, The entire trip from the upper viewing area, down the slopes, taking all the pictures, and then climbing back up the slopes took a grand total of 15 minutes, so that was nice.
From there, we headed down the road to go out of the park, and just as we were leaving, perhaps 45 minutes or so away from the top, the skies looked fairly clear behind us in the rear view mirror, so I asked my mom to take a look to see if she could see rainier, and she could!
So we pulled over on the side of the road and took a bunch of pictures, and then we had a brief conversation about whether or not to go back because my mom had already made plans with her friend get dinner with her in chehalis area.
We debated about it for a little while, and my mom called her friend, and her friend voted for us to go back to see if we could get up to the summit again to be able to get pictures with the clouds gone.
So we hightailed it back about 45 or 50 minutes up to the summit, bypassing Paradise all together, and heading back over to that Lake where we had seen that you could get great pictures of the peak across the water.
By the time we got there, Rainier was mostly clouded over again, but she was a bit of a tease because here and there you could see little bits of her, so we ended up staying there in the Long parking strip beside the lake taking picture after picture after picture after picture, trying to get at least a handful of decent ones.
The lady never uncovered herself completely, but we were able to get a handful of good pictures with the reflection in the remarkably still Lake.
🥳😍
We ended up staying until quite late, basically almost dark, trying to catch the last last hope of a completely bare peak, but what we learned was that Rainier makes her own clouds. We would see huge breaks in the clouds in the distance, and then we would wait for those brakes to make it to the summit, but brand new clouds would develop in the exact same spots over and over and over again.
It actually took me a little while to realize that’s what was happening because I wasn’t paying attention regularly. I was looking at the break in the clouds, and then taking pictures and looking around, and then looking back at the break in the clouds. But over time, I realized that they were just basically appearing out of thin air as they went across the mountainside.
So we never got a completely uncovered picture after going up to the lake, but we did get some pretty decent ones where the peak Was at least decently uncovered.
From there, it was after dark, so we looked for a place to stop for the night, hoping to find a place like the others we’d found, along the side of a creek or river, or with a beautiful mountain view across the valley, or something like that.
There was a road that went off to the north from from the main highway that runs away from the park and toward I-5 that looked like it was promising.
Though it looked like it was promising, I had the little thought pop into my brain that, no, that wasn’t where we should go. I was just uncomfortable for some reason.
But since I no longer trust those feelings, I didn’t really pay much attention to them, and we just continued on up the road. On and on we went, and periodically, I would get that uncomfortable feeling like we should be there or something.
But I kept ignoring the feeling, and we kept going on.
Finally, we got to the end end of the road, having found an absolutely beautiful place to stay for the night. I got out and was taking pictures, but that feeling was so strong that I was nervously looking all around me for bears or something that might hurt us. It was like something was definitely not right, and like something was going to happen.
I took a bunch of pictures, beautiful pictures, and then we started to get ready for the night, with me still ignoring those feelings. But then there came a point where I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I was no longer just nervous about a bear or something.
Something was definitely wrong.
I started to tell my mom about it, and we talked about it for a little while, and I tried to get over the feelings because it seemed like such a great place to stay, and we were about to go ahead and just push through when the feelings became so strong. It was like there was this Super evil presence that was there, and it was so powerful that it was overwhelming my senses.
So strong and so powerful were the feelings of fear and the evil that enveloped me that I Left the doors of the van locked and crawled over the driver seat, leaving my mom in the back of the van Aunt making as quick of a u-tailing it out of there.
I think that’s the third time in my life I’ve had an experience like that. Once when I was 16 or 17 going out to go camping with my friend Sean, once while in Oahu on the North shore camping on the beach, and tonight.
It was like there was somebody there or something there that was just pure evil, and like we were a Target or something if we had stayed.
There was no rhyme no reason to the feelings. Nothing that we saw… Terribly wrong.
So we headed down, the drive taking longer than I had wished it would. I just wanted out of there!. We drove down and out from that dirt road and got back on the highway headed west.
We drove and drove and drove all the way to I-5, where we chose to stop for the night. We checked out the friendliness of one gas station, but they had signs saying they weren’t going to let us stay overnight, so we headed over to another one that didn’t have any unfriendly signs, pulled Rover up into a parking spot, and crashed for the night.
Crazy ending to an otherwise beautiful day
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 