The day we visited Mount Rainier was cloudy and it never did clear up.  We were disappointed in that because our pictures didn’t turn out as well as we wanted, but the views of the mountain were all we hoped for and more.

As you drive up to Mount Rainier you don’t see the mountain because of the old-growth forests and the hills between you and the mountain.  We were on some switchbacks and at one point we were driving south (away from the mountain) but I saw a hill appear to the north that had some snow on it, so I turned to look more and THERE IT WAS!  It was HUGE!  It was REALLY HUGE and RIGHT THERE!

Jeff couldn’t see it and there was no place to stop for a while, but when we did come to a parking area and got our first real view of the mountain we could only just stare up at it for a few minutes.  It’s over 14,000 ft and nothing else around it is anywhere near that tall so it sticks up there by itself!

We’ve been to Mount Whitney which is higher (highest point in the lower 48 states) but it’s surrounded by other tall mountains and what you see is the mountain range…and also depending on your viewpoint other mountains appear taller quite often.  It detracts from the awesomeness, I feel.

We’ve also seen other mountain peaks that are standing by themselves (Shasta, Lassen, McLaughlin, Baker) but this one was truly impressive!!

One thing I was impressed with is that there are 25 very large glaciers on Mount Rainier.  That’s as many glaciers as there are in the entire Glacier National Park, which is spread out over many miles and many peaks.  One glacier, Nisqually, feeds a very large riverbed full of boulders that you can see in one of the photos below.

Here are the photos we took: