Day 29 (June 3, 2010)– West Side Road Hiking and Tragedy on the Mountain

     Today I worked the Breakfast and Dinner shift which means I have a long break in the middle. The weather today was amazing perfectly clear from 6:00 a.m. to mid evening. I could see the mountain for the first time in like a week, so I had to go hiking. I decide that I was going to hike as far as I could up the West Side Road of the Park. You might as why I was hiking a section of roadway, well Mount Rainier has a problem of the glacier feed creeks flooding and ruining the roadway. Currently two of the parks roadways are closed due to flooding damage, West Side and Carbon River. Both of these closers create a problem for hiking the Wonderland Trail (but I will go into that at a later date). So the only way to get up the see the West Side Road is to hike up it. I had about 4 hours to hike and 45 minute drive each way. I wasn’t going to have time to hike the entire road (its 12 miles long but I could do part of it). I started up the road and the first thing I came to was the word “bear” and an arrow drawn on the trail so I had to spend a couple of minutes looking for the bear. No, I didn’t see it. I continued up the road and for the first quarter mile was wondering why the road was closed it looked pretty good to me but then again I grew up driving up and down a gravel driveway. After a quarter mile, I understood why the road was closed. The river had created a couple of gullies that most vehicles would not be able to cross though those with high ground clearance could make it.

      The next part of the trail was all up hill. About three quarters of the way to my goal, I realized that it was 2:00 p.m. and I had to be at work at 4:30 if I wanted time to eat before shift. So I turned around and headed back (I didn’t want to but I am here to work). I made it to work on time and with time it eat before shift, but just barely. On the hike, I had noticed a helicopter flying around the top of Mount Rainier. While I was eating I found out the cause of the helicopter, it was an avalanche on Ingram Glacier (I know my mother has posted that I was ok and not involved in the avalanche). The early counts had 11 groups on the mountain at the time of the avalanche. Later in the day, we found out that most the parties had made it down ok. Including one commercial group that turned back shortly before the avalanche. At night fall, the rumor had 6 buried and dug out, and 1 still missing.