Skyline Trail Loop — Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008

Mount Rainier Area > SW - Longmire/Paradise

The weather was sunny and clear. The parking lot at Paradise was very crowded because it was the opening weekend of the new Vistor Center. The trail starts off paved and straight up. We saw a bear within the first 10 minutes of the hike. It was about 50 yards off the trail eating plants. The fall colors are amazing. It takes about 30 minutes to weed out the tourists from the hikers. You start running into people with 60lb packs that are headed to Camp Muir and eventually the summit. I'm not fit enough for that yet. We went from hot and sweaty to really cold. It changed very quickly. The trail became covered in snow. Not deep but annoying slippery and slow going. There is an amazing lookout area at the top of the loop before you head down the other side. You have great views of Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens. The backside had 2 different ways to get back to Paradise. We chose to remain on the Skyline trail, instead of taking the short cut (golden something) which would have saved us about an hour. It is really weird how many people you run into once you get within 20 minutes of Paradise. All the tourists dressed in fancy clothes and going picture crazy. The hike took us 5 hours. I've heard that people can do it in 4 hours without the snow and hanging out at the look out.