If you have more than two days, add a day trip to Ohanapecosh. If it’s your first time at Mount Rainier National Park and you only have a couple of days (say, a weekend), our recommendation would be to focus on Paradise (and that’s where you should base yourself).
There are two great hikes here though that are worth braving the bumpy drive for (in a high-clearance vehicle).
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It is free from the tourist hype of Paradise and Sunrise, and the long and arduous bumpy gravel road to get there cuts the number of visitors significantly.
However, it’s basically an old-growth forest, so you’re not getting those unobstructed Rainier views. There are a couple of family-friendly hikes in the area, a large campground (that’s generally the least competitive in the park), and it’s a good central location between Paradise and Sunrise. Ohanapecosh – Best for family-friendly hikes: This part of the park is at the southeastern corner, near the Stevens Canyon Entrance of the park.This is probably the part of the park with the best selection of epic, long hikes to tackle. It is also home to the highest point in Mount Rainier National Park that you can drive to. Sunrise – Best for hikes with epic Rainier views: Sunrise, which is on the east side of the park, has a large network of hiking trails winding through the rugged yet stunning wilderness.It’s where you’ll find the best waterfall hikes at Mount Rainier, along with countless meadows bursting with wildflowers in the summer. Paradise – Best for first-time visitors: Paradise is the most popular area to visit, located on the southern side of the Mountain, and home to some great day hikes at Mount Rainier.Here’s a quick summary of each to help you decide which area is right for your hiking adventure. Our point here is that you should think long and hard about which region or regions you want to visit. The guide below is organized by region for that reason. If you can believe it, it’s actually longer from Mowich Lake to Sunrise. And Paradise to Mowich Lake is three hours, one way.
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They’re not particularly close to each other, so knowing where each hike is located within the park is important for planning a successful visit.įor example, going between Paradise and Sunrise takes a full 90 minutes, and that’s only when the roads are open in the summer (the road closes in the winter around November). There are four main areas of Mount Rainier National Park that we’re going to cover in this guide: Paradise, Sunrise, Ohanapecosh, and Mowich Lake. The park essentially wraps around Mount Rainier’s base, and the only way to get between the various regions is to circumnavigate the huge mountain. Since then, we’ve made multiple trips, spending more and more time exploring some of Mount Rainier’s best hikes, and we’re sharing them with you to help you discover the perfect hike for your fitness and experience level.Ĥ.2 Early Fall is a Very Pleasant Alternative to Peak Summer A Quick Mount Rainier Geography Overviewīefore we get into specific hikes, we really think it’s important to take a second to talk about the geography and layout of the park. I grew up in the Seattle area, and now have settled in Portland, Oregon, which is close enough to Mount Rainier to make an easy weekend getaway.įunny enough, I had never actually been to Mount Rainier until fairly recently, despite growing up in a suburb of Seattle. In this guide, we’ll go through the best hikes in Mount Rainier National Park, according to me, a Pacific Northwest local. Well, we’re here to tell you that it’s even better up close, which you can only experience by heading two hours south of Seattle and hitting the hiking trails in Mount Rainier National Park. It’s rare enough with the gray and drizzly weather that you often find in Seattle between roughly October and May (okay, July) that it’s always a treat to catch a glimpse of the towering snowy peak. There’s nothing better than a clear day in Seattle when you can see Mount Rainier to the south, the Olympics to the west, the Cascades to the East, and Mt. Whenever I’m in Seattle, which is fairly often since I grew up in the area and my family still lives there (though we now live in Portland), my favorite days are the ones where you can see Mount Rainier as you’re driving east on I-90 from Bellevue into Seattle.
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