One Best Hike: Mount Rainier's Wonderland Trail. Doug Lorain
and once you climb above 3,500 or 4,000 feet you will be in wonderful sunshine. By later in the day the clouds usually burn off, even at lower elevations.
Finally, there is the often-stated fact that Mount Rainier makes its own weather. Because the mountain is so much higher than everything else in the neighborhood, it frequently pokes its nose into the jet stream and gathers clouds around its summit. Thus, it is not uncommon for visitors at lower elevations to be bathed in calm and sunshine while looking up at a mountain (or, more precisely, a cloud bank where the mountain ought to be) where the conditions are very windy and either raining or snowing. Even more common is for hikers to see lenticular clouds, which form over the summit when warm air from the ocean meets the cold of the mountaintop and condenses into clouds. Usually these very photogenic clouds are either mushroom-shaped right over the top of the peak or strung out as high-level winds push them to the east. Lenticular clouds often indicate that the moisture content of the atmosphere is rising and a storm may be on the way.
A Word about Mileages
Hikers who feel the need to know exact mileages are bound to notice something along the Wonderland Trail—you cannot trust the NPS signs. The only thing you can rely on with these signs is that they will be inconsistent. On countless occasions you will be told at one end of a trail that the distance is a specific total, and then upon reaching the other end find a sign telling you that the distance you just covered is actually 0.3 mile or more different. In fairness, part of the problem is that the trail’s mileage is constantly in flux. The climate here is very tough on trails. Every year trail crews are forced to reroute sections of the Wonderland Trail to detour around flood damage, washouts, and landslides. In addition, during the high water of spring and early summer, dozens of streams and rivers in the park change their course, forcing seasonal bridges to be moved, slightly altering the trail’s total distance.
Many years ago a frustrated guidebook author had a friend get out a measuring wheel and do her own mileage numbers. She was so obsessed with numbers that she even went so far as to tell readers the exact length of every one of the hundreds of bridges along the Wonderland Trail. I am not that extreme, so in doing this book I did not take new measurements, though for maximum accuracy I have generally used the numbers from her book. For new trail sections, or for places where the path has been significantly rerouted, I have used a combination of NPS signs and my own pedometer readings. When I wrote this book, these measurements were as close to accurate as I could reasonably make them. Mother Nature is far from finished with her annual changes, however, so expect the mileages to vary somewhat over time.
That said, despite my training as a certified public accountant, I am not particularly obsessed with mileage numbers and have never seen the functional difference between a distance of, say, 3.9 miles and 4.2 miles. It simply won’t change my hiking plans one way or another based on which figure is accurate. Factors such as the elevation gain, trail conditions, my level of tiredness, and the weather all make far more difference in hiking time and enjoyment than knowing the mileage down to the nearest tenth. To me the NPS signs are usually close enough. It’s mostly a function of attitude. Still, for those of you who just can’t live without exact numbers, you will be glad to know that someone at the NPS (who apparently had way too much time on his or her hands) once produced an information sheet telling hikers that the Wonderland Trail (excluding any side trips and the inevitable walking to and around camp) has a total distance of 92.172 miles and a total elevation gain of 22,786 feet. (Unless, of course, you happen to park one or two slots farther away in the parking lot or have to take an extra step around a fallen log, and then your totals will be completely different.)
Have a Safe (And Fun) Trip
Opposite: Mount Rainier from pond in Spray Park
Despite all the bad movies you may have seen about the outdoors, the greatest dangers you are likely to encounter while backpacking are not angry bears, crazy hunters, hungry mountain lions, or “evil” rattlesnakes but more mundane threats such as being wet and cold for too long (which sounds merely uncomfortable but can actually kill you) or falling down and hurting yourself. These concerns might not be “sexy” for the moviemakers, but they are by far the most common types of dangers faced by hikers on the Wonderland Trail, so you need to know how to avoid them to have a safe trip.
Hypothermia
Hypothermia occurs when the body loses more heat than it can produce, thus causing the body’s temperature to drop. When it falls below about 95ºF (only 3.6º below normal), hypothermia sets in and symptoms begin to occur (see below). Once your core temperature drops below about 78–80ºF, your brain and heart cease to function. People who “freeze to death” actually die of hypothermia long before they freeze.
It does not have to be bitterly cold for a person to suffer from hypothermia. In fact, the overwhelming majority of people who die from hypothermia do so at temperatures well above freezing—from 30–50ºF is most common, but you can get hypothermia when it is 60ºF or more. Typically, people start to feel the effects of hypothermia when they and their clothes are wet from rain or snow and temperatures are in the 40s or 50s. Wind dramatically compounds the problem. Sound familiar? If not, reread the section on “Weather” and you will quickly see why hypothermia is the number one danger to hikers in Mount Rainier National Park. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is that anyone contemplating hiking the Wonderland Trail be equipped with not only the right gear and clothing to avoid hypothermia but also the skills to recognize the symptoms and the knowledge of what to do to reverse it.
Hypothermia can set in remarkably quickly, and because one of the symptoms is a loss of mental functioning and good decision-making skills, you need to regularly monitor both yourself and your companions, so that you can catch the warning signs before your decision-making abilities are impaired. This is particularly crucial if the weather is wet, windy, and cold. The first symptom is shivering, which is your body’s attempt to warm itself as its core temperature falls below 95ºF. As your temperature continues to fall, you develop signs of confusion and lack of manual dexterity. Once your body’s temperature falls below 90ºF, you may no longer feel cold but will probably become incoherent and have severe lack of judgment. Things are extremely serious at this point because your body is losing its ability to rewarm itself, and it must receive heat from an outside source. Any further loss of body heat will cause the body to slowly shut down, and you will eventually die. Reversing severe cases of hypothermia can only be done in a medical facility, which is not a realistic option while hiking in the wilderness of Mount Rainier National Park. Therefore, it is very important that mild cases be caught early and treated in the field before they become severe.
You can treat mild cases of hypothermia by getting the affected individual out of the rain and wind as quickly as possible and have him or her move around vigorously. Have the person remove his or her wet clothing and don something dry and warm. If the person is conscious, feed him or her warm liquids, such as hot chocolate or soup, that can be swallowed and digested easily. Place the person in a prewarmed sleeping bag alongside bottles that are filled with warm water. If the hypothermia symptoms are more advanced, have the person strip and place him or her in a warm sleeping bag with one or two other people (also stripped) who curl around the victim and provide skin-to-skin warmth. Despite bad movie advice to the contrary, do not give the person alcohol, which will open restricted blood vessels and allow blood to flood the extremities, making the person feel warmer but only at the expense of the body’s core, where the warmth is critically needed.
As with most problems, a far better plan than treating cases of hypothermia is to avoid them in the first place. The best way to do this is to wear adequate clothing and to try to avoid potentially dangerous situations, such as hiking for prolonged periods along exposed ridges when the weather is cold, windy, and raining or snowing. As previously mentioned, you absolutely must