national park

Crater Lake is an amazing geological formation that can teach us a fair bit about the world around us, from rock formations, to water minerals, to weather patterns. Visiting this park is best done in a couple days than in a couple hours.

Rainier is a mountain that will get under your skin, in a very, very good way. There is something captivating and enchanting about Mount Rainier that pulls us in and doesn’t let us go. John Muir, one of America’s best naturalists, understood the draw of Rainier.

I was completely oblivious of our nearest national park until only a couple years ago. Now that I’ve had the chance to explore it, I consider it one of my favourite parks, and one of the best places to venture for a weekend of hiking.

Olympic National Park is best described in three words: wild, remote, and rugged. There are three separate ecosystems to discover, and three unique areas of the park to explore. Because of it’s isolated location, visiting the park is best done over multiple days.

​Sunrise is a truly beautiful area of Mount Rainier to explore. We were lucky enough to get a taste of much of it, spending a couple nights at backcountry sites, a couple nights at a front country campground, hiking low, hiking high, seeing sunsets and sunrises.

The day after our aborted backpacking trip in the north-east corner of Mount Rainier National Park was grey and dreary, though a bit less rainy. After some discussion and perusal of our map, we decided to head to Glacier Basin, a trail that conveniently started about 50 feet from our campsite.

Dan and I rarely travel back to a previously visited location. Yosemite Valley is now an exception. Two years ago we came through Yosemite Valley as part of a backpacking trip from Tuolumne Meadows (in the High Sierras) to Half Dome and then to the Valley.
When we started planning our John Muir hike, we decided that we wanted a few extras days to spend in Yosemite Valley so we booked ourselves into the Curry Village tent cabins (now known as Half Dome Village.)

A couple weekends ago we had an amazing trip to Mount Rainier National Park with the friends that will be joining us for a section of our JMT hike. Our goal was to hike up to Camp Muir, on the South-East shoulder of the mountain. The hike climbs nearly 5,000 feet in 4 miles, travelling over the Muir Snowfield.

This year we knew we had to get our packs on and do a “shake down.” Thankfully we are lucky enough to have an amazing National Park right in our back yard. North Cascades National Park is about a 2 hour drive from where we live and has a huge variety of backcountry trails. We studied our map and some trip reports and finally decided to hike alongside Ross Lake on the East Bank Trail.