Mowich and Tolmie Peak Lookout Hike

Last summer we wanted to go up to the Mowich area to see the lake.  I had not been up here but heard about it often. Ben has been here several times and wanted to come up here with me to see the scenery.  We drove up in his dad's truck and sadly the gate was closed.  I figured that it was summer time and the gate and road were open by now.  So we hiked the 4 miles up to Mowich Lake instead of driving up there to do the Tolmie hike.  We wouldn't have had enough time or energy to do both so we decided to wait until next summer to do it. 

We waited.  I suggested that this next weekend would be great to do it because the weather would be great, clear so we could see Mount Rainier and we would stay dry.  Ben agreed.  We had planned to do some hiking and camping so we went grocery shopping, bought a small battery powered lantern and a single burner stove to make food with.

Like I mentioned, throughout the week we went shopping.  I got easy food to make for our meals.  The least amount of stuff we had to pack the better.  I made sure my clothes were clean and all of our toiletries were in its container.  I charged all the batteries and phone power sticks because where we were going there was no power or cell phone coverage.  I added a query to the GPS for caches along the way.

The night before I packed everything I could that I was not going to use that night or morning.  I had Ben pack up all of his stuff before going to his shift so he could just leave there in the morning.  He ended up having to go back to his station to pick up stuff he forgot.  I had to stay until at least 9 to make breakfast for dad, take his blood pressure and O2 levels before I could leave.  Mom had half day so she could take over at lunch time.

Ben arrived and we started packing up the rest of the stuff and I made some breakfast sandwiches to get us by until lunch time.  We left shortly after for Bonney Lake.  We had to stop by his mom's house to pick up his Nalgene bottle, mess kit and some other odds and ends he's been keeping in his Explorer.  We bought some ice for the cooler, got to his mom's house, found the items, used the restroom, left a note and then we were on our way to Mowich.

He took me the back way to Carbonado and drove through Wilkeson, the last town before the long 17 mile dirt road that led us to the lake.  We stopped at the Mount Rainier National Park boundary.

We got out at the gate and grabbed an envelope to put our $20 fee in and filled out the necessary vehicle information and placed the tab on the dash and the envelope inside the drop box.  We continued on and as we got higher and higher Mount Rainier got bigger and bigger on the horizon.  We made the dusty turns and hit sections of potholes and washboard surfaces.  My Escape was getting very filthy.

We worried that we left too late and all the camping spots would be taken.  Ben also mentioned bears and wild cats and what we would do if we encountered one of them.  I highly doubted that we would come across one.  We just had to make sure that our food was in the car when we were done using it.

We arrived shortly after 1ish and saw the parking lot was packed!  I had Ben get out to see if there were anymore camping spots and he said there were a few...first come first served.  We got out the tent and the tarp and picked out a spot.  It was quite a walk from where we parked to where our tent spot was.  I suggested that we just put up the tent and worry about the other stuff after our hike to Tolmie Peak.  He agreed.  I started putting up the tent as he went to go get a couple other things from the Escape via wheel barrow.  Yes, they provided a wheel barrow.

I got the tent up but the raised box area was too small to put the tent stakes in so we had to move it to a bigger raised box area.  I got frustrated with the tent and it was already hot.  He helped me move it to its final location and he put the stakes in.  We threw in a couple of sleeping bags and pillows.

We took the wheel barrow back to its area and went to the Escape to get ready for our hike.  I made some sandwiches, grabbed the bag of chips, some chewies and filled up our bottles with water because we would need it.  I grabbed my walking pole, Ben got the GoPro ready and we were off.  About 5 minutes into it I realized I forgot my camera.  We walked back and decided to drive closer to the trail head.

We got onto the trail around 3ish.  The map mileage told us it was a 5.6  mile hike round-trip but it reality it was more than that with the switch-backs.  It was closer to 7 miles.  I haven't hiked this much in a while so my body was not used to all of this walking or the hills.  We encountered several structures of basalt columns along the way.  Ben wanted to climb them.  We did bring our climbing shoes.  I just knew we wouldn't be able to because we would be too tired from hiking on the way back down.

We passed several people hiking back to Mowich.  They said it was definitely worth the view.

 We got to the turn off where we would hike towards Eunice Lake instead of straight towards Ipsut Pass (we might save that for another outing in the future.)  We took the junction towards Eunice Lake, which took us downhill then to a steep one mile climb to Eunice Lake.  When we came into the valley where the lake was I was in awe.  It was so pretty and the water was so clear!

The last mile to Tolmie Peak Lookout was very steep with several switch backs.  Ben told me to treat this last portion like a video game and this was the boss stage.  Each switch back was a boss that I had to beat until I reached the top, in which we won the game.  We passed a group of loud women who said that the Blue Angels flew by Mount Rainier about a half hour ago.  Ben and I heard a loud plane but we were in the trees and didn't see it but never thought it would be the Blue Angels. We stopped at a clearing and soaked in the views from 5900 feet.  We could barely make out Seattle to the north and we saw Mount St. Helens to the south. We walked another 100 feet and there was the lookout.  The view of Mount Rainier was gorgeous!  We arrived just after 5.

We relaxed, took pictures with the camera, GoPro and my phone and ate our late lunch on the lookout while staring into our fantastic view.  Two other groups of hikers came and went as we were enjoying the area.  We decided to leave around 6 so we could get back, cleaned up and finish setting up the rest of our tent.

Along the way we passed a lot of hikers heading up for the sunset and blue moon.  We had no idea that the blue moon was happening.  We had some curious birds follow us for about a half of a mile.  Upon further research I found out these gray birds who seemed to be comfortable being around humans were Gray Jay's.  I've never seen or heard about them until I got home.

We got back to Mowich just before 8, drove my car back to the lot, we got back the exact same parking spot, took our sleeping stuff out and took it to the tent.  We ate another sandwich and got ready to rinse off in the lake.  We brought our towels and clean clothes with us.  We tried to get done before it got dark. We got our clean clothes on and  I got the lantern out and we continued getting our tent ready to sleep in.  After arranging everything, brushing our teeth and using the bathroom one more time, Ben got his computer ready for us to watch a movie.  We decided on The Proposal because we wanted something funny to watch.  We went to bed just after midnight.

Next Adventure:  Spray Falls Trail, Waterfall and the Trip Home