MOUNT RAINIER | Feeling small next to this GIANT! 4 days camping, and a grizzly bear encounter
so we just spent a week visiting family and friends in the Vancouver area and the Sunshine Coast area of British Columbia. We didn't film anything because we just wanted to appreciate the time with our family and friends, but we had some nice little adventures with them. We did some hiking and mountain biking, but we're back on the road now. We have crossed the border into United States; so hello Americans! And if you couldn't tell we are in Mount Rainer National Park. Ahead of us we have three nights/ four days in the back country. It's going to be
great weather, probably the last nice weather weekend of the season in this park. On Monday, there's going to be some rain and probably snow coming in, which is the day that we're leaving. So we should get out of the park just in time before they close the gates. So we have a short hike up to our campsite today, because we left the Sunshine Coast this morning and made it all the way to the park. We only have like two to three hours of daylight left so we had to take a small day today, but we're excited to see what this park has to offer. sorry buddy This is the full map of Mount Rainer National Park and all the hiking trails. We'll give you
guys a closeup so we can show you what our itinerary is for the next couple of days. We're going to be exploring kind of around the sunrise area of the park. We parked our car here at the White River Campground and yesterday we did the hike inter Fork, all the way to Glacier Basin camp. Today we're going to backtrack a little bit and head up this way, along Burrows Mountain, to this Junction here and then we're going to head up this way to Berkeley Park camp, which is going to be our camp tonight. Tomorrow, the plan is to backtrack down this way and possibly do a little side quest up to mount Fremont Lookout. We'll head back down this way and then we're camping, tomorrow night, at Sunrise camp and then Monday morning we got to get out of camp and head back down to our car at White River camp, because they are closing the rest of this road on Monday at noon because of a storm coming in.
So that's our preliminary itinerary for the next couple days but we'll see if we stick to it. There's a bear not too far from the trail that we need to head down. It's hard to tell from this far away, but it looks to be a brown bear, a grizzly bear, and you can probably see the trail that we need to hike down. So he's not too far from the trail so we're just going to wait here a little bit. Hopefully he's going to move away. I think it was mountain goats down there!
So bears and national parks are usually not too aggressive, they're very used to having people walk around, so we're hoping he's not going to pose any issues for us, but we'll just continue cautiously from here on. So we made it out alive. Both of us, it was our closest encounter to a wild grizzly bear and there was some moments that was a little scary but uh he ended up being pretty chill! We made it to our campsite and that was an amazing day! Epic views of Mount Rainier and the grizzly bear encounter was probably the highlight of the day. We also saw some mountain goats! That was fun. We're pretty tired and sore, we already made dinner and there're still an hour left before the sunset, but we already feel like we're ready to hit the bed. So we'll see what tomorrow brings, whether our feet can carry us up to the Fremont Lookout. We can actually see the lookout from the campsite. It's a little
daunting thinking that we have to climb all the way up there but we'll see how we feel tomorrow. We had an exciting morning this morning. We saw probably over 10 Mountain goats. They're probably the same group that we saw saw yesterday evening on our way down to camp, but we only saw about three of them last night. And we saw some funny little bouncing birds in
the river. I've never seen that before, they're so cute! We're just filling up our water in the stream now, because it might be the last spot that we can fill up until our campsite later this afternoon. So we're going to make the day trip up to mount Fremont today. It's about 2.6 miles, but we don't need to bring our whole backpacks, so I'm going to stash my bear can in the trees. Maela is going to stash her bag. I'm going to bring this with us just to carry our water and the camera gear and then we'll just pick it up on the way back. We're just going to shove it in this patch of Evergreens here. We made it to Sunrise Camp. There's no views of Mount Rainier from here, unfortunately, but we're hoping
tomorrow morning, we just have to hike up the trail, maybe 5 minutes and fingers crossed we'll be able to see a nice sunrise on the mountain. But I think we're going to end up being the only ones in this Camp, just like we were last night. I think we're in for a nice quiet night. Well that was an absolutely amazing experience! We're so happy that we were up early enough to witness that Sunrise. It was a little bit cold and dark when we got out that tent, we almost didn't do it, but we're so glad we did. And if ever you get the chance, make sure to experience a Mount Rainer Sunrise from Sunrise Camp. It should be on everyone's bucket list honestly! So the nights have been getting pretty cold where we are and we're struggling a little bit to sleep in the tent with just a sleeping mat and a sleeping bag, it's not as comfortable as the van, so I think from here on out we're going to start hitting more south. Try and find some warmer
weather so now we just have to go down, break our camp, head back to the van and that'll be it!
2024-11-04 10:19
