Many of you guys are new to the area, or for one reason or another haven't been up to Mount Ranier yet. It's an amazing feature of our landscape and mid to late summer is a great time to visit! The alpine meadows at the higher elevations are riots of color with blooming wildflowers in July and August, so I thought we could go take that in. We'll start out carpooling from the Westside Tops, leaving at 11am. We'll enter the part at the Nisqually entrance and head up past Longmire to the visitor center at Paradise. Being the height of summer it will be busy, so we'll take as few cars as we can. In the summer 4-wheel drive is not required but realize the road is steep in many places and has many hairpin turns, so you need to know how to drive in low gear on the way back down.

Once we're at Paradise we have many options. The Visitor Center is very interesting and informative, and comfortable if you'd like to just relax for a bit. There are telescopes that you can use to view the glaciers even if you have no desire to hike up to see them in person. There are concessions and bathrooms there. I also plan on doing a couple of short hikes that start from the visitor center:

The Nisqually Vista Loop is 1.4 miles with 200ft elevation gain and offers views of the meadows with wildflowers and the Nisqually Glacier. More info:
http://www.visitraini...
http://www.wta.org/go...

The Alta Vista Loop is 1.5 miles with 540ft elevation gain and the wildflowers are it's main selling point. More info:
http://www.visitraini...
http://www.wta.org/go...

It's a couple hour's drive each way and we'll probably spend 2-4 hours at Paradise, so this will be a most-of-the-day, very relaxed kind of thing. If there are folks who want to spend a little less time, we could group you in one car so that we'll have some flexibility about return times. I suggest we pack sack lunches and have a picnic when we get there (or buy lunch there if you'd rather not pack one), and either stop for dinner on the way back or aim to get back in time to do your own thing for dinner.

Questions? Please email or call me at [masked].