Day 1 - The Drive

June 11, 2007

Seattle, WA to Mt. Rainier National Park via Enumclaw, WA

After forgetting to change my watch to Pacific Time flying in from Juneau, I am picked up by the guys at the family condo instead of meeting at REI as originally planned. After greetings, apologies from me, and assurances that I’ll carry the rope for the trip, we head toward the mountain, stopping at the Tacoma REI for sporks and stove gas, and an excellent pre-climb lunch provided by Quizno’s. After some truly heinous suburban Seattle/Tacoma traffic, we finally arrive in the park exactly 25 minutes after the climbing permit office has closed for the day. We track down some extremely helpful rangers, who inform us that we’ll need to drive all the way around the park to get to the White River entrance, since the road that we would normally be able to take thru the park was thoroughly obliterated in several spots by the floods of November 2006. We drive almost all the way around the mountain, and after a bean-erific Mexican meal and some grocery shopping, head into the park to find our entry point at the White River campground, only to discover that the campground hasn’t opened for the season yet. We backtrack to Enumclaw, find a motel and crash for the night.