Distance: 10.2 mi.
Elevation Gain: 3200 ft.
This was birthday weekend for Brian and I, so we headed out with Jim to Rainier for a relatively easy scramble. It turned out I had done this climb almost exactly seven years previously to the date (6/18/2014) and I remembered really enjoying it. It turns out it was still enjoyable!
We left town and made our way to the Owyhigh Lakes trailhead to find a parking lot with a single available space. There didn’t seem to be many good options for other parking nearby so I’m not really sure what you would do if you wanted to hike here still….I recommend getting there early on the weekend. We started hiking at about 8:15am.
We cruised up the very nice trail until about 5000′ where we started to encounter snow. The snow soon became deep and we occasionally had to think about where we were going, usually able to follow other boot tracks, but really we just needed to keep traversing south. We soon came out to views of the lakes and Governor’s Ridge. We continued past the lakes, nearly to the pass before turning right up open slopes to gain the south ridge of Tamanos. We were following some fresh bootsteps up this slope and as we turned toward the north to gain the ridge we saw that we were catching up on this other large group.
It was easy going to the ridge and we started passing this other group. Once at the top of the ridge near 6,600′ it was mostly snow free and we enjoyed the easy scramble over to the true summit. We went back and forth a few times to find the best route but it mostly sticks just west of the ridge. We made it to the top just before 11:30 and had a quick lunch before the other group arrived. We headed back to the false summit to let them have the true summit for a while and had another break at the false summit.
We quickly made our way back down to the lake where we took another break in the sun. I tried to fish a little in teh western Owyhigh Lake. I didn’t see any fish and it looks potentially too shallow to even hold them. It was fun to practice some casting though. We sat here for almost an hour before heading back down the trail a little before 2.
The trip back was uneventful but of course felt longer than the way up. We were back to the car at 3:15 to finish off another great day in the mountains.
(Download the free Gaia GPS app on your phone to view tracks and then get a Gaia GPS membership if you want offline access. Discount below!)
Recommended brew: 903 Brewers Pecan Porter Brewer’s Reserve
Gear Used:
- Aluminum ice axe
- Day pack
- Fishing pole
- Gaiters
- Glacier glasses
- GPS
- Helmet
- Microspikes (unused)
- Trail runners
- Trekking poles
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