Paradise Glacier/Reflection Lakes Loop
July 29-30, 2006
On one of our last weekends with Marshall we packed up Friday afternoon and headed to Cougar Rock campground near Longmire. We had been having great weather all week and were hoping for the best on the weekend. We arrived to some clouds on Friday afternoon, set up camp, and took a short hike (actually we got lost looking for the trailhead) up the Wonderland trail towards Carter Falls.
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| Camp at Cougar Rock | Crossing the Nisqually River |
The next day we awoke to clouds and lots of them. We decided to go for the big loop hike anyway and hope that it cleared off later in the day so we could see the mountain. We parked at Paradise and started out from there, on the Myrtle Falls trail, then the Golden Gate trail to Skyline and up the spur to Paradise Glacier.
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| Myrtle Falls - what a view, huh? | At Panorama Point |
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Onward to the Paradise Glacier |
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After backtracking the Paradise Glacier trail we headed down the Skyline to the Lakes Trail and descended to Reflection Lakes, taking a break at Faraway Rock.
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| At Faraway Rock | Marshall with a camp-robber |
After the lake we headed back up the trail to Paradise and to the car, a nice 9.5 mile day and we never once saw the mountain.
We had planned on hiking to Van Trump Park on Sunday but it rained during the night, flooding Marshall's tent and soaking pretty much everything we had. We took one look at the clouds, it started sprinkling again, and we packed up and drove to the Copper Creek Inn for a nice warm breakfast and some espresso before heading home.