The smoke conditions hadn’t changed for the worse overnight, so we were ready to hike the Skyline Trail Loop in the Paradise section of the park. We had to get to the visitor center super early because parking here is crazy! Our leave time was 5:00 AM, which put us there around 5:45 AM, and surprisingly, there were still plenty of parking spots left.

The hike started out pretty steep, with some serious elevation gain right off the bat. The views of Mount Rainier were immediately amazing, though, so it was hard to keep moving without stopping to take a million pictures.

One of the birds Caroline and I really wanted to see was a grouse, and we ended up seeing one pretty much immediately on the trail! It was a male signaling to some females, so we actually ended up seeing three. Their calls were so cool, and it was such a fun way to start the hike.

After about an hour on the trail, we came to a viewpoint and got to see our first marmot! He was snacking on some wildflowers and looking very cute, as marmots tend to do.

From there, we continued climbing and ended up seeing another group of marmots, this time a mom and her three babies! The babies were wrestling around on a rock, and they were so adorable. We could have watched them forever, but eventually we had to keep moving.

We continued higher up the mountain, and the views just kept getting better. 

At another viewpoint, we could see both Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens, which is apparently pretty uncommon. We definitely weren’t complaining about getting such a clear day, especially after all the stress about smoky conditions!

We stopped for a quick bathroom break, and it was actually really nice! I wasn’t expecting to find any facilities in the middle of a hike unless you’re at a campsite, but I guess with such a popular trail, they had to put one in. While we were there, we also spotted the cutest little chipmunk sitting nearby and surveying the land.

From then on, we were mostly above the tree line and started seeing a lot more snow. Around the halfway point, we got to see a mountain goat and a pika! We were pretty pumped at this point because we were checking so many animals off our list in one hike.

At some point around here, there is a split off for Camp Muir, which is the base camp for those who are preparing to summit Mount Rainier. If we had have had time, I’m sure Jordan would have tried to cram this in the schedule. Although I was a bit wary, since you have to cross a glacier to get there (which means crevasses!)

The hike eventually started heading back down, and this is when we started seeing even more wildflowers. The stream beds were especially pretty, and I had so much fun stopping to take pictures of all the different flowers.

During the descent, we also got to see a BEAR!!! This was super high on our list of animals we wanted to see, so we were very excited. It was pretty far away, but we could see it foraging in the meadow. It was still such a cool thing to see out in the wild!

The last big view on Skyline was the waterfall that everyone takes pictures at. It was pretty cool, and definitely a fun way to finish out the hike.

After making our way back to the lodge, we were ready for lunch. We were a little bummed because we really wanted to eat at the sit-down restaurant, but they were closed for lunch. Instead, we headed over to the barbecue food truck out front and ordered some elk burgers and lemonades. The elk burgers were good, but the lemonade was absolutely terrible. It was basically watered-down lemon juice with no sugar. Not exactly the refreshing post-hike drink we were hoping for! It was hilarious too because we all four ordered lemonades.

After finishing lunch, we headed into the cafe at the lodge to get some better drinks. I ended up with a cappuccino and a sweet treat to go with it, and it was delicious after all that hiking.

Of course, we had to hit the gift shop before leaving. I was on the hunt for a hat to wear on our hike the next day, and of course, a T-shirt is always required at every national park we visit. It’s basically a rule.

Souvenirs purchased, we decided to squeeze in another trail called Bench and Snow Lake. This is supposed to be another really popular hike, and since we were already in the area, we didn’t want to miss it. It was only supposed to be 2.3 miles with 500 feet of elevation gain, which sounded pretty easy after Skyline. Once we got on the trail, though, we quickly realized that 500 feet of elevation gain can still be a pretty good amount of climbing, especially after already hiking!

It was definitely harder than we were expecting, and we hadn’t brought our trekking poles at all. The first stop was Bench Lake, which had a pretty steep entrance we had to butt-scoot on due to not having any poles. Worth it though, look at that view!

We spent some time taking pictures because it was absolutely beautiful.

As we were getting ready to leave, I spotted a snake swimming in the water! He was so cute and small, and it was actually really fun to watch him swimming around and checking everything out.

It was getting a little late, so we continued on toward Snow Lake. We were pretty tired at this point, so we didn’t stay for very long, but we stopped long enough to take some pictures and fuel up before heading back.

By the time we finished, we were definitely ready for dinner. We headed straight to Packwood Brewing Co., where they had Mexican bowls and a really cute outdoor seating area. We ordered our food and brought it outside to enjoy.

For our sweet treat, the brewery had an ice cream vendor set up, so obviously we had to try some samples. I ended up getting the Kentucky Pie and Butterscotch Brownie mix.

We had another early hike planned for the morning, so we headed over to the grocery store real quick to pick up some lunch stuff to eat on the big hike. PB&J materials acquired, we headed back to the Airbnb and got all of our bags packed. After packing, we spent some time in the hot tub, which felt amazing after an eight-mile day of hiking.

Buuut this is where things started to go awry. For reference, there are five main areas of Mount Rainier National Park. All of the hikes we had planned were either in the Paradise or Sunrise sections. Paradise is where Skyline Loop and Bench and Snow Lake were located, which meant that we only had hikes left to do in the Sunrise section.

We had already pushed one of our Sunrise hikes, the Mount Fremont Lookout Tower, to the last day of the trip because smoke from the wildfires east of the park had created unhealthy air conditions.

So, we were sitting there getting ready for bed and planning our hike for the next morning when Jordan suddenly bursts into the room while I’m about to change into pajamas. He says “There’s a fire in Mount Rainier. Sunrise is closed.” What?!

It was such a shock. We had been watching the smoke conditions all day, and everything seemed like it was going to be okay. To make matters worse, the WiFi at our Airbnb started going out. The hosts had warned us when we first arrived that the internet was intermittent, but it hadn’t really affected us until we suddenly needed to research alternate hikes and figure out what was happening with the fire. 

After some painstaking research, we found out that it was a 200-acre fire that had started just a few hours before we were going to bed.

I was so glad that Jordan had checked the news because we were supposed to be waking up around 4:00 AM to drive to the trailhead and start our hike. We could have easily woken up in the middle of the night and headed straight toward a closed area of the park without even knowing what was happening. 

We had to use a combination of the Mount Rainier paper map and whatever bits of internet we could get in short bursts to try to come up with a new plan.

I tried to figure out if we could still get onto the Wonderland Trail by approaching it from the opposite direction, but I couldn’t find the AllTrails route for it. I was also worried it would end up being too long of a hike without knowing for sure how good the views would be.

In the end, we decided we would do Naches Peak, which is right on the border of the Sunrise area. It was also on the way, and we were worried that area could potentially close because of the fires too.

We were all pretty bummed about losing one of the hikes we had been looking forward to, but we tried to stay positive and figure out what we could do with the situation we had been given. At this point, our carefully planned itinerary was officially out the window. We had no idea what the next day was going to look like, but at least we had a plan for the morning.