The weather for the next few days looked pretty gloomy with predictions of showers, but we decided to go hiking anyway and finally decide on Mount Tomanos in Mount Rainier National Park. Out the door at 6:00 AM leaving our 13 year old daughter to finish up her ""beauty rest."" Tomanos Mountain is a 6800 ft peak that sits west of Owyhigh Lakes and is accessed via the Wonderland Trail (leaving from the Owyhigh Lakes trailhead and traveling past Owyhigh Lakes). Viewed from the Lakes, Tomanos is fairly impressive as it rises about 1600 ft above the lakes. The approach takes you through a fairly old forest that thins out as you rise into alpine like open areas. When done in the summer or fall, there are numerous flowers and the view from the top makes the trip worthwhile. The Owyhigh Lakes trailhead is about 2.2 miles past the official entrance where you have to pay to enter. The trip to the lake is 3.5 miles with about 1500 ft of gain. Tomanos adds another 1.5 miles and 1600 ft. Currently, the trail is snow-free to 5200 ft (basically the lake) and it looks like most of the rest of it will melt out pretty soon as there is only a ft or two of snow on the ground. There were 3-4 downed trees, but they were pretty easy to get around. One of the things we noticed as we entered the Owyhigh Lakes basin was evidence of numerous avalanches. This is clearly a place you don't want to be when snow conditions are not stable. We saw trees a ft in diameter that were broken in half! As we climbed further, we saw more avalanch debrie. We took the standard route up to the top of Tomanos. Walk past the lakes until you reach a plateau (about 5300 ft). The plateau is shown on the USGS map as an open wide treeless area (for you GPS users 46 deg 51.792 N, 121 deg 35.184 W. When the trail is snow-free, look for a way trail that goes off to the right. A climber's trail leads all the way to the summit). From there you traverse northwest up the slope until you reach a broad saddle. Turn right (north) and follow the ridge to the summit. Note that the snow on the ridge can be fairly hard late spring. It was hard enough near the summit that we had trouble kicking steps and would have put on our crampons if we had thought to bring them. An ice axe is a must. Although the snow was hard and the ridge steep, if you fell there really wasn't much risk of falling and sliding over a cliff. Well back to the trip. We did beat the rain, sorta. The trees blocked the light mist until things opened. After that it started snowing. We ate our lunch on the summit in a blizzard with 150 ft visibility. While we didn't see much, it was still a fun trip and one that we would recommend. Doug and Liz

The trail is pretty much snow free and in good shape until past the switchback at the 5000 foot level and then the trail is under snow from there to Owyhigh Lake and beyond. The lake is just starting to melt at the edges with a wonderful turquoise blue ring around the edge. The way crosses some steep sidehills heading south to the lake so an ice axe or ski poles are recommended. From the lake we headed west up the snow field to the south ridge of Tamanos Mountain. The final summit ridge is snow free and there is a faint boot path/game trail on the west side of the ridge from the south false summit to the northerly true summit. There is one very short but steep gully to negotiate on the way and then 3 exposed steps right at the summit. Generally the views from here are tremendous but due to snow and clouds we only had occasional glimpses of jagged Governors Ridge and none of the Cowlitz Chimneys or “the Mountain”. The glissade from the ridge back down to near the lake was fantastic.