Hike: Burroughs Mountain

Hike: Burroughs Mountain
By Arlene

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So this is it! This is why we live in the Pacific Northwest and tolerate cool summers; this is why my sister and I spend week nights going up and down city stairs for exercise. This is why we get up at 5 am and drive two hours to ensure some solitude and a parking spot in the National Park.

Until today most of our hikes this spring and summer have been under 6000 feet and in sub-alpine regions because of the late snow melt. Finally today we got up to about 7500 feet to put us close and personal with Mt. Rainier from a vantage point on Burroughs Mountain.

I feel the need at this point to apologize to all my out of town summer visitors from past years who I have failed to take to Burroughs Mountain. The hike is considered moderate; it is 6-7 miles with a nice trail (although we avoided the Frozen Lake half of the loop as the ranger said the un-melted snow field was a bit treacherous) and took us through 4 different elevation zones with all sorts of wild flowers in each section.  

We want to thank Jerry and his friends for getting us to Burroughs Mountain; they were hiking the Wonderland Trail (100 miles around Mount Rainier), and we met them with mid-point supplies  at White River Camp and then drove to Sunrise and hiked up to Second Burroughs to meet them for lunch.

After lunch we hiked with them back to First Burroughs and parted ways. At this point, Arneta allowed me as much “camera stoppage time” as I desired. I was in heaven; there were wildflowers everywhere, periods of bright sunshine, pea-green lakes, steel blue mountains, gazing mountain goats, a long white river, dwarfed alpine forests, and I had a full camera battery. It’s a miracle she got me back to the car before dark.

I will remember this hike for a long time and will whine a little less when we are climbing stairs mid-week; keeping my legs and lungs in condition will ensure that I can go back up again next year.