We chose a loop trail in the Mount Rainier national park for our 5 day backpacking trip. It's known as the "Mother Mountain loop". We hadn't done this particular loop yet and thought it would be fun.
We drove to the Carbon River ranger station Monday morning and gave the ranger our proposed route and campsites. We got a Wilderness permit for each of the campsites that we had requested!
The hike begins at the gated parking area for the Carbon River trail.
There used to be a drivable road to the Ipsut Creek "car" campground, but due to a storm in November of 2006 where 18 inches of rain fell in 36 hours the road was damaged and it was closed to cars. You can read about the flooding and damages to the park HERE. There is a 5 mile road walk in to the campground.
Rest break time, it's always nice when you can find a nice log to sit on and get the pack off for a bit. We bring a few extras that most people probably wouldn't bring like: warm clothes and rain gear even though there was a good weather forecast for while we would be on the trail, so our packs were pretty full. I weighed my pack before we left home and it was about 40 lbs.
Better safe than sorry, that's our motto!
Walking along the Carbon river.
The bridge below is just before the campground.
There are alot of trees down in the campground, but there are several sites for camping available.
We chose site #10 for the night.
I marked out the route we took on the map below.
I used my Garmin to track our distances each day. Our day’s total was a bit more than it should have been, that's why I like to look at the route after we finish to see just what happened. On the relive video below, it shows where the GPS got crazy and went off trail for a ways. It should have been a fairly straight route, but at about the five mile mark you'll see what I mean. It looked like it freaked out when we came along side a hill. I'm glad it found us again and followed us into camp!
Relive video of our first day -
https://youtu.be/6DiXI3wkAQ8
Garmin stats:
Miles hiked - 6.42
Ascent - 620 feet
Descent - 46 feet
Next Post: Part 2 - Ipsut Creek campground to Cataract Valley campground.
Looks like it was a wonderful day! :-)
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