A Tale of Two Volcanoes: Experiencing Paradise

Contents:

29 July 2003: Experiencing Paradise: Part 2

More flowers.
Close - up of wildflowers. The blue ones are lupines or Texas bluebonnets, the red ones are magenta paintbrush. The ones with the white brush at the top are pasque.
Bear Grass at the start of the Nisqually vista trail. At the end of this trail one can get a good view of the Nisqually glacier and the start of the Nisqually river. I went on this trail with a ranger-led group. Besides telling us about Paradise and the Nisqually glacier, our ranger was very knowledgeable about the wildflowers.
Nisqually Glacier and origin of Nisqually river. The glacier is the huge lump of frozen mud above the Nisqually river. I, like others in the group, had the misconception that glaciers are blocks of ice, and so thought that the glacier was the small inverted triangle of ice about 1 inch about the start of the river. The river is muddy because its water comes from the silt laden glacier. In contrast, rivers created through melting snow are clear. The Ohanapecosh river in the southern part of the park is one such example.
Close-up of Nisqually Glacier

More wildflowers. These are found closer to trees whereas the ones above are meadowland wildflowers. The red flowers in this photo are Indian paintbrush, not magenta paintbrush as seen in above. (Photos of wildflowers and vegetation are available on the Park's web page at: http://www.nps.gov/mora/ncrd/flowers.htm)

At the end of the ranger-led walk, when we emerged near the visitor center, a mule deer made his appearance. I whipped out the camera and took a picture, but the photo doesn't do justice to the deer, so I have omitted it from these pages.

View of Martha Falls from Stevens Canyon Road. This is a beautiful cascade nestled amongst the trees. It was on the opposite side of Stevens Canyon to where I was, so it was not possible to capture the upper parts of the cascade in the photo as not much light was falling on it. I took this on my return to Crystal Mountain.

I stopped at Reflection Lakes on my way back to see if the wind had died down to photograph Rainier and its reflection, but it hadn't, so I continued on my way only stopping at the viewpoint for Martha Falls. The descent through Stevens Canyon was a bit scary as I was driving right next to the edge of the mountain with steep drop-offs in some places. Since I went slowly, I didn't have a problem.

It took 2 hours to drive from Crystal Mountain to Paradise excluding stops. I ended up sightsee-ing for around 2.5 hours, while 1.5 hrs went in lunch, looking around the visitor center shops, walking back and forth to the car at Paradise, etc.

Return to Top of page ------ Back to "Experiencing Paradise: Part 1" ------ Forward to "Inside the Blast Zone: Part 1"
All photos are copyrighted 2003 onwards. Please contact me (ndcruz at depaul dot edu) if you wish to use them for commercial purposes. Otherwise, please credit Noella D'Cruz when using them for personal or educational purposes.