Spray Park
You’ve probably heard of Mount Rainier National Park. If you’ve been there, chances are you’ve been to either Paradise or Sunrise. That makes sense as they are easily accessible and are great areas to visit. The views of the mountain from both are spectacular, and in the summer, the flower show is sublime. Plus, access is relatively easy, as a paved road leads to a large parking lot and a lodge that sells beer.
Unfortunately, the masses have very much discovered the park, and descend upon these two areas specifically in the summertime. It’s gotten so bad that it can sometimes be a multi-hour wait to get into the park on a sunny weekend in August, and once you are in, you still have to find a place to park. It’s become a bit of a nightmare and the park is trying to come up with a plan to make it better, but in the meantime, it means that one has to get a little more creative.
One of the best ways to beat the crowds is to visit another area in the park. The Mowich Lake area is one of those places. It’s on the west side of the park, and it does not feature a paved road, a large parking lot, or a lodge that sells beer. What it does have though is several unique and interesting hikes that offer a different view of the mountain. I’ve done several, but never the most popular one in the area - Spray Park. So, when my friend Brian was heading down and checked to see if I wanted to go, of course I was in.
The Spray Park trail is deceptive in that it starts off heading downhill at a gentle grade as it winds around the head end of a valley. Eventually though, it reaches the uphill part, which gets steep in places, but the trail is in great shape and it’s nowhere near as steep as most of the hikes in the North Cascades. As the grade eases, the trail pops into a meadow with the first views of The Mountain. On the day we visited, the avalanche lilies were going full blast in places. We also spotted a clump of frog eggs hatching tadpoles in a nearby pond!
The first views of The Mountain as the trail enters Spray Park. Lots of avalanche lilies!
Tadpoles hatching from eggs in a pond. This was a super cool find!
After entering Spray Park proper, we made our way through it, marveling at the flower show and the views of Rainier. Unfortunately, we were a few minutes late to see a bear - some other hikers warned us that a bear was nearby, and upon hearing this we excitedly swapped to our telephoto lenses, hoping to catch some photos of him. I think this took the other hikers by surprise as I think they expected us to turn around or something!
Scattered throughout the park are a series of tarns. We made our way to the northernmost one, at the very end of the meadows. The tarn was small, but offered a lovely view of the mountain. I liked the way the edge of the tarn created curves, and they were fun to play with to see how to best capture the mountain. Surrounding the tarn were fields of flowers, and I enjoyed trying to capture a few in the light of the setting sun.
After exploring this tarn, we made our way down to a larger tarn we had seen earlier. We wanted to check it out for sunset, and see if we could capture the alpenglow on the mountain. Alpenglow on Rainier is pretty special and starts quite early, since the mountain is 14,411 feet tall after all. It can make for tricky conditions to shoot in, as the mountain will often be significantly brighter than the foreground. Careful exposure work is required in a situation like this, and what I ended up doing was bracketing sets of three exposures and then blending them in later on my computer. That ensured that I didn’t blow out the highlights on the glacier or underexpose the lake shore.
After sunset was over, we thought about sticking around for stars and the full moon, but it had already been a long day and we were at least 3 or 4 hours from the moon lighting up the mountain, so we decided to call it a night and made our way back down the trail in the dark.
Spray Park is definitely a keeper, and should be on your list to visit if you are in the area. Visiting in the fall offers a chance to see the fall colors too, something I hope to be able to do one of these years. One gotcha on the trail is that the road is a little rough. Most years, it is quite washboarded and may pose a problem for some vehicles. The Mowich Lake area offers several other excellent choices too. The Wonderland Trail leaves from here (and goes through Spray Park), plus the trail to Eunice Lake and Tolmie Peak is excellent in its own right. Mowich Lake itself is also very peaceful. But most importantly, the crowds are light (by Mt. Rainier standards) and you don’t have to wait for three hours to find a parking spot!