A glorious Sunrise hike around Mount Rainier

By 7 a.m. on a summer morning, dozens of climbers were tramping past our tent in the White River campground in Mount Rainier National Park.

I stared sleepily at the climbers, their ice axes and helmets dangling from super-sized backpacks, as they set out on the trail that begins at the campground, their first steps in scaling 14,410-foot Rainier.

I wish I had their lungs and stamina and could make it to the summit. But I settled for a recent weekend of exploring the lower flanks of Mount Rainier, car-camping and taking glorious day hikes with my teenage daughter in the Sunrise area in the park's northeast corner.

If the weather is good, fall can be one of the best times to visit Mount Rainier. Summer crowds are gone. High-country trails finally are mostly snow-free. It's an easy getaway, just over a two-hour drive from Seattle. And it's cheap: I spent about $50 for the campground and park-entrance fees and gas, making it an ultra low-budget weekend amid world-class scenery.

The Sunrise side

Anyone who visits Mount Rainier has favorite places. High on my list is the Sunrise area, where a twisting, but paved, road deadends in a 6,400-foot parking lot, the highest place in the park that can be reached by car. Unless the snow flies early, the road to Sunrise will be open through Oct. 13 then shut, as it does every year, for the long, long winter. (It usually doesn't reopen until late June or early July).

Compared to Paradise, the more popular and year-round visitor area on the south side of Rainier, Sunrise is short on amenities. Sunrise has only a basic cafe and small visitor center, both already closed for the season while Paradise has an overnight lodge and restaurant — the historic Paradise Inn — and a new visitor center opens Oct. 10.

Yet Sunrise gives some of the best close-up views of Rainier, from its glaciated flanks to the gleaming summit, and has excellent trails for day hikes. Sunrise trails aren't as easy as those at Paradise, where some meadow paths even are paved. But the rewards at Sunrise are the in-your-face views and fewer people. Paradise gets more than 300,000 visitors a year, said Chuck Young, chief ranger of Mount Rainier National Park, while Sunrise gets only about a third that number.

My don't-miss hike at Sunrise is Burroughs Mountain, named after the 19th-century naturalist and essayist John Burroughs. Over the years, I've hiked it with scampering 6-year-olds and my admirably-fit, 80-something mother.

The Burroughs trail is a 7-mile loop route that's easy to shorten; just walk as far as you want and go back the same way. However far you go, hike upward (north) from the Sunrise parking lot and go counterclockwise to get the most of the Rainier view. There are a few short steep sections, but the elevation gain is just 1,000 feet if you go all the way to the end, not bad for a Washington mountain trail, although the high altitude can make the elevation gain more noticeable.

Hiking through lush alpine meadows at the start of the trail, my daughter and I picked out the flowers we knew — colorful Indian paintbrush, lupine and mountain daisy. There were scads more, but I'd forgotten my flower-identification booklet and my binoculars (useful for spotting climbers as they toil up Rainier) back at our campsite.

The meadow gave way to a rocky ridge where chubby marmots perched on boulders and squeaked in alarm as we approached. We squeaked when fellow hikers alerted us to a bear ambling a couple of hundred yards below parallel to the trail. Thankfully, the bear veered away.

By the time we reached the tiny Frozen Lake, often ice-edged even through summer, the last of the firs had straggled out. Here above the tree line and on the flat-topped, mini-summits of Burroughs, the landscape resembles Arctic tundra. Tiny plants cling to life among the dark rocks — Burroughs is the remnant of an ancient lava flow — for the few snow-free months of the year.

Many hikers stop at the first 7,000-foot mini-summit, appropriately called First Burroughs, where Rainier looms magnificently above.

My daughter Stephanie was eager to hike another mile to Second Burroughs where the trail ends at 7,400 feet. I needed my energy for the next day's hike, so persuaded her to head back down to our campsite.

The smell of s'mores

White River campground, where we stayed, is one of my favorites at Rainier. It's a 112-site vehicle-campground that draws many tent campers and not too many partyers. A few lucky campers get spots right beside the rushing water of the White River, but most campsites are tucked into the firs. We pitched our tent and fell asleep to the aroma of s'mores and wood smoke from campfires.

I needed all my energy for our next day's hike to Summerland/Panhandle Gap, one of the loveliest and harder day hikes in Mount Rainier National Park that starts just a few miles from the campground. The reward for hiking its relentless upper switchbacks is some of the most glorious scenery in the park, a tapestry of flower-filled meadows (sometimes snow-patched late into summer), waterfalls, the craggy spire of 11,138-foot Little Tahoma, Mount Rainier's little-sister peak, and, of course, the majestic bulk of Rainier.

I huffed and puffed as we hiked about 10 miles, with more than 2,500 feet in elevation gain. Luckily for me, a snowfield was my excuse to stop short of the 6,800-foot Panhandle Gap. I quietly blessed the soggy snow for giving me a break, although my boundlessly energetic daughter was eager to keep going. Next summer, I assured her, we'd come back and hike farther into the wilderness glory of Mount Rainier.

Kristin Jackson: 206-464-2271 or kjackson@seattletimes.com