Hiking at Burroughs Mountain

There are two national parks that are close to Seattle (Olympic National Park and Mountain Rainier Nation Park) and I tried to go there once a year. I have already been to the Olympic National Park for a camping trip back in July 4th. As for Raininer, I had been planning a trip there since May and after many setbacks, the trip finally happened last weekend.

You can enter Rainier National Park through three entrances:

• from the southwest side through the Nisqually entrance to the Paradise visitor center
• from the east side through the White River entrance to the Sunrise visitor center
• from the south east side through the Stevens Canyon entrance (have never been there so don't exactly know where it goes)

Sunrise is the highest visitor center you can get to (~64ooft) and you can get the closet view of Mount Rainier via the Burroughs Mountain trail and that's the trail we chose to hike last weekend. The trail is a part loop trail and part out-and-back trail; the total distance round trip is about 9 miles, the elevation you need to climb is about 2500ft (the trail goes up and down at a few places), and the highest point you'll get to is about 7800ft. This trail has three peaks (Burroughs Mountain 1, 2, and 3) and each peak gets you closer to the Rainier and the view gets more and more spectacular but, of course, the difficulty level increases as you go along.

We were lucky enough to get a really awesome day and we were able to see Mount Rainier very close up. The hike is tough towards the end (on the way to peak 3) but the view was totally worth it. I highly recommend to anyone who want to visit Mount Rainier National Park. Where is the details about the trail? Well, I am going to skip them as as you can find it from the link above. How about pictures? Well, it'll be available some time in the future :).