2020-08-26 Skyline Trail Upper Loop at Mount Rainier

hey good morning this is uh mount rainier paradise and this is probably going to be the last wildflower hike of the season we've been seeing on the trip reports that they're still blooming here so i brought linda a dear friend and wallflower expert to help us identify them anyway it's pretty cold so we're going to get moving here but uh thanks for coming along all right let's go okay here's two very common yellow flowers i want to show you the first is mountain arnica and you can notice it's got paired leaves the leaves are right next to each other in pairs whereas over here the ground cell which looks very similar the leaves are alternating so that's an easy way to tell full grouping of sickle top laos wart and there are six different laos warts in washington most of the leaves uh look like ferns these do not so here's some sub alpine spirea uh the sun's hitting mount rainier now isn't that beautiful let's go joe and i just found jeffrey shooting star down in a little creek right here and it is one of my most favorite flowers wow so here's a lot of the orange paintbrush here we found a beautiful bunch of what we think is a honeysuckle okay here's our next last word of the day this is called bird's beak so there's where we started about an hour ago paradise parking lot ah here's our third laos award of the day this is called bractin laosward here is a beautiful example of mountain heather and as the story goes it was john muir's favorite flower because it reminded him of his scottish heritage cool and here's yet another allow sport coiled i'll sword okay this is a good spot to show you the western half of the tattoos ridge here so there we have that's plummer that's denman or maybe the other way around i get those two mixed up a lot that's pinnacle that's castle and then over here moving west we have foss and then that's unicorn and in the most western part you have steven's speak and then way back there is the goat rocks wilderness taking a nap he's pretty bored with us so this little monument commemorates the uh summiting by van trump and stevens in 1870 of mount rainier here's another kind of laos ward my favorite in fact this is called elephant's head oh this is a good place to show you some of the eastern ridge of mount rainier of course that's the summit there and then next up that is gibraltar rock and then back in there is cathedral rock and then you have a little tahoma peak here and then the last one i wanted to show you those two smooth humps there are callouts rocks it's a great day when it's not hazy and you can see all the way to oregon to mount hood like today look at that now that we've climbed a higher elevation we're seeing the western anemone in bloom rather than its seed head mouse on a stick [Applause] look here in this beautiful stream we found some gorgeous pink monkey flowers hey now we can see people enjoying panorama point which is straight across from us right now but we're going to take the upper skyline trail we'll be about 200 feet above them so there below this is panorama point with some people there and then even further down is the parking lot with my truck hey we made it to the top of the upper skyline loop down off of it then and looking south we can finally see mount adams because we're high enough there's mount st helens crater and now we're seeing the western half of tattoos ridge and i want to show you a couple that's weapon io peak there and then at the finishing up the end of it there's eagle peak above longmire hey we've had a nice hour up here we'll show you the uh second half of the loop now it's shorter so there won't be quite as many clips on this part so here's the junction with one of the ways up to camp mirror [Music] there's the nisqually road bridge down there way down there and this i think is davidson spinsterman and this is panorama point [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] hello and here's the famous saying by john muir at the steps at the end of skyline loop hey so that's the end of the hike today what'd you think of it i absolutely love this hike and the extra elevation is so worth it and i hope you thought so too thanks for coming along see you on the next one

Channel: Joe Hendricks

Views: 2,046

Rating: 4.9333334 out of 5

Keywords: Joe Hendricks, Hikes, Hiking, Mountains, Cancer, Trails, Hiking Trails, Linda Otto, Mount Rainier National Park, Paradise, Mt Rainier, Skyline Trail, Skyline Loop Trail, Mazama Ridge, wildflowers, marmots, lousewort, jeffrey shooting star

Id: bNYDpYkKQqQ

Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020