Continuing the photo gallery approach with the pics from my big camera, these are all from our hike on the Skyline Trail on Mount Rainier. It’s organized fairly logically - mainly chronologically, but I did group some of the photos by themes in some galleries to make things a little more interesting.

Our early morning start will look a lot like yesterday’s photos, just with some very different (and much nicer) light this morning.

The light on Myrtle Falls was a lot more even this morning, and I was able to go with a slightly longer exposure.

The mountain and the little river, streaming down from the alpine.

It’s such a lovely view, especially in this early morning light.

Early in the hike, we came across a rocky area along the trail and were fortunate enough to find some pikas running around getting ready for winter. So cute!

From the scree slope where the pikas were, we headed down into the valley a little bit.

As we headed down, we could see out across the valley to the Tatoosh Range.

You can see the toll that winter takes on everything, including the bridges.

The snow and glaciers on top of the mountain.

There are many little streams flowing down from the mountain, creating small waterfalls as we continued along the trail.

Looking back and down onto Paradise as the trail started to climb again.

This spot last time was a riot of colour from wildflowers. Where are they all!?!?!

The wildflowers, while not abundant, were beautiful in places.

Our trail started climbing back up and towards the mountain.

An interesting cairn on the trail.

In this section of the trail, you could really see where the glacier had receded, leaving this small valley where the vegetation was taking hold.

A nice reflection.

With all the water, there were lots of flowers, making for a lovely scene.

Continuing to climb…

Wildflowers! While there were not as many as we had hoped, there were still lots to be found.

Off in the distance, the layers of mountains looked amazing in the distance.

Justine, posing in front of Mount St. Helens.

As we climbed, Mount Adams started to come into view from behind the local mountains.

Mount Adams

Mount Adams to the left; St. Helens to the right.

We were starting to get close to our highest point on the hike.

Looking up, we can see the very tiny hikers on the snow field, hiking up to Camp Muir, the staging area for summit ascents.

The trail is pretty easy to follow…

Another view of Mount St. Helens.

There was not a lot of snow down low, but there was this small snow bridge along the way.

The smallest patch of snow left.

The people add some perspective to the sheer size and scale of the mountain.

Even some part of the way up, it makes you feel insignificant.

Close up of the glacier ice.

Mount St. Helens, off in the distance.

Mount Adams looms in the distance.

At this point we were starting on our way back down.

The valley below, where the glacier used to reach down to.

Close up of one of the cool waterfalls coming off the glacier.

More glacier close ups.

Look at that train of people heading up…

Wildflowers, with Mount Adams in the background.

These fluffs are some of Justine’s favorites.

Looking back at the mountain as we came back down into the alpine.

Waterfall close up!

I just love the blue of the old, glacier ice.

With my big lense I could see Camp Muir way up on the mountain, and the stream of hikers heading up.

There’s not a lot of snow left, it’s mostly old ice now exposed.

Marmots! And ground squirrels - there were lots of them around, and we enjoyed watching the little one play.

Our little baby marmots were a lot of fun to watch. So cute!

We noted this plant for the first time on this trip. It had some very interesting flowers.

We also found this bird along the trail - I think it’s ptarmigan.

Heading back down the mountain at the end of the day, the clouds started rolling back in.

Our campsite!