Anyway, I'd concocted an 8- or 9-mile route that would cover most of the famous Skyline Trail, with Mazama Ridge and Faraway Rock thrown in for good measure. I didn't see a single hiker for the first two hours, and on the Lakes Trail (Mazama Ridge), I crossed paths with just a few small groups.
Then I hit the main trail, and it was like Alpine Disneyland. Experienced hikers, clueless hikers, families with little kids, families with grandparents, bored teenagers, horny teenagers, foreign tourists, domestic tourists, photographers with foot-long lenses, "photographers" holding up iPads... EVERYONE was on that trail. (I shudder to think what it would be like on a sunny Saturday or Sunday.) And of course, there are busybody N.P.S. volunteers all over the place scolding at you to "stay on the trail!" even when you're standing on a bare rock that's 12 inches away from the trail.
But I know you just clicked on this link for the photos, so here we go... first of all, here's a map (from Google Earth) of my demented counter-clockwise "loop":
My hike started on the road just below the iconic Paradise Inn.
I started down through the woods on the Lakes Trail and crossed a stream.
Hey look, wildflowers! I wonder if I'll see any others today...
The Tatoosh Range started showing up in my south-facing photos. This is along the High Lakes Trail, headed east.
There's a decent-sized pond right above Faraway Rock, surrounded by spirea.
Here's a few Tatooshes and Louise Lake as seen from the viewpoint atop Faraway Rock.
I headed north on the Lakes Trail, up Mazama Ridge. (Magenta paintbrush are so cool that I just had to include them somewhere.)
This photo of Stevens Canyon from the trail going up Mazama Ridge would've looked much better in the evening:
The hiiiiiiiills are alive...
...with the sound of bumblebees and flower flies.
Wildflowers!
Volcanoes and wildflowers!
A trail through wildflowers!
I turned left (west) when I hit the Skyline Trail. This is the upper Paradise Valley.
It's apparently a very good year for heather everywhere.
I left the Skyline Trail after about a mile and headed up the Golden Gate Trail, whose switchbacks you can see on the hillside in the upper right. Flower-wise, the entire area (Edith Creek's basin) looked pretty much like this photo.
This one was new to me: bird's-beak lousewort (Pedicularis ornithorhyncha).
Back on the Skyline Trail and headed up the mountain, things started looking a little more alpine.
The Lewis's monkeyflower is happy about the snow-melt streams.
Here's a non-wildflowery view to the southeast. Goat Rocks and Mt. Adams are on the horizon.
This patch of brilliant red is actually seed pods, not flowers.
To get to Panorama Point, you can either go straight west across the snowfields, or up and around. Most tourists were afraid of the snow and went the long way.
From Panorama Point, you can see the whole Tatoosh Range. Mt. Hood is somewhere on the horizon, looking small and insignifcant.
Tahoma is one bad-ass mountain.
Cairns gone wild, Mt. Rainier edition. After this high point, I left the Skyline Trail again and took the Pebble Creek Trail more-or-less west for half a mile.
This was the fattest ground squirrel I've ever seen. He/she was eating lupine flowers and lupine seeds.
Heatherrific.
Another new flower to me: some kind of white penstemon.
The last mile of the loop, some of which was paved with asphalt, looked pretty much like this the whole way: solid wildflowers, one field after another, all the way down to the Visitor's Center.
I included this photo to point out that blooming asters were actually pretty rare when I was there... but they're coming, and will extend the flower show for another couple weeks after the lupine is done.
A parting shot of Rainier, and paintbrush of course.
More wildflowers... what a surprise.
The side of the road leading away from Paradise is striped with parking spots for more than a mile. When I drove down at about 4:00, there was nearly a solid line of cars parked at least halfway down that stretch.
Anyway, then I drove barefoot down to the bottom of the valley, parked at the Reflection Lakes parking lot, put my boots back on over fresh socks, and climbed to the top of Pinnacle Peak, the second-highest mountain in the Tatoosh Range:
Pinnacle was about 3 miles round-trip, with about 1700' of elevation gain and a fun/sketchy scramble to the summit (which I had all to myself!), but I'm gonna save that story for a separate trip report.
...and then I got back to Portland just before midnight.
Overall, I'd highly recommend this trip to anyone who hasn't been there before. Mt. Rainier is sorta like someone took everything about Mt. Hood and nearly doubled it: bigger wildflower meadows, deeper river valleys, taller neighbors, more lakes. But be prepared for massive crowds... even on a Tuesday.