Rainier's Carbon River region is a paradise all its own

In the Northwest, Mount Rainier is nearly an equal partner with the sun and the moon. Sometimes the foothills seem to disappear and the mountain truly appears to float in the sky.

Yet despite its celestial appearance, the rock-and-ice reality of the mountain is relatively close by.

The Carbon River region, in the park's northwest corner, is only a two-hour drive from Seattle, making exploring the flanks of the volcano relatively easy.

Often overshadowed by the park's more popular regions -- including Longmire, Sunrise and Paradise -- the Carbon River Valley is a region of old-growth forests, easy day hikes and access to some stunning sections of the 93-mile Wonderland Trail, which rings the mountain.

"It's an area of the park a lot of people don't know about," said park spokeswoman Donna Rahier. "It has some unique inland rain forest, and lots of nice, lower-elevation trails."

Be warned, though: the Carbon River is no secret. Even on a weekday, you'll find a dozen or more cars at the popular trailheads. It's especially popular with residents of Puyallup and south Tacoma, who have a 14,411-foot peak parked in their back yards.

Still, you can find fragments of solitude between friendly hellos to hikers along the trail: quiet groves of centuries-old western hemlock, the melodic call of a hermit thrush, or a stop for lunch overlooking the most voluminous glacier in the lower 48 states.

On a recent summer day, we hiked up the 3.5-mile Carbon River Trail intent on seeing the glacier. And the bear.

At the Carbon River entrance ranger station, a ranger informed us of a recent black bear sighting on the trail. She told us that bear sightings in the region have been increasing in the past few years. Last year, a bear that was a frequent visitor to the Ipsut Creek Campground had to be relocated. Having only seen one bear in all my hikes in the Cascades and Olympics, I was ready for another encounter.

The five-mile drive from the ranger station to the trailhead proved bearless. But as we navigated the rutted road, a small rabbit sprinted across our path. And not long after, a startled coyote loped into the forest of western hemlock.

MERYL SCHENKER/P-I

The waters of the Carbon River are a milky gray thanks to the silt, or "glacial flour," produced when rocks imbedded in the Carbon Glacier grind against the rock over which the river of ice slowly flows downhill.

The valley is home to one of the last inland rain forests in the region, receiving between 180 and 210 inches of rain a year. It's also home to a host of threatened and endangered species, including chinook and sockeye salmon, northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet and Van Dyke's salamander.

The road is bumpy and, in the past, sections have tumbled into the Carbon River. Though the road is open now, the battle between the road and the river is unceasing, with the road often the loser.

To address the situation, environmental groups and several members of the state's congressional delegation have proposed an 800-acre addition to northwest corner of the park. The added parcels would allow the Park Service to close the often-damaged road and to build a new campground to replace the aging Ipsut Creek camp.

According to Heather Weiner, the National Parks Conservation Association's Northwest director, the proposed land purchases, with a price tag between $4 million and $6 million, would protect this unique rain forest, help create a proposed Tacoma-to-Rainier greenway and prevent continual rebuilding of the road. "It would end up saving the park money in the long run," Weiner said.

From the Carbon River trailhead, the trail maintains a pleasantly easy grade most of the way to the snout of the Carbon Glacier. Columbine, tall bluebells, vanilla leaf and other wildflowers dot shady patches along the route.

MERYL SCHENKER/P-I

The lush old-growth forest of the Carbon River Valley is home to a variety of lowland flora, such as these tall bluebells. The area gets so much precipitation that it even sustains a unique inland rain forest.

While stopping for a water break, I met Deb Villa, a hiker from Puyallup who was on a 16-mile round-trip day hike to Mystic Lake, her favorite spot on the Wonderland Trail. During the summer of 1979, she hiked the entire Wonderland and climbed to the summit of Rainier.

Mystic Lake lived up to its name, apparently. "It was just so pretty and serene in the moonlight," Villa said of her time there 25 years ago. "It was just perfect."

This day also was working on perfection. There were occasional peek-a-boo views of the mountain up the valley, its glaciers blindingly white in the sun.

At about two miles, the trail branches and the fork to the right continues up to the glacier. A spur trail to the left links with the Northern Loop Trail, a spectacular alternative to the northern stretch of the Wonderland Trail. The Northern Loop takes hikers through tremendous alpine parklands and thickly forested valleys.

Our trail continued upward at a leisurely grade. The Carbon River was frothing gray past us, loaded with sediment freshly scooped out by the glacier. Several families with children were hiking this easy path. A footbridge crosses a splashing creek, and then at 2.5 miles the trail reaches an elaborate steel and wood-planked suspension bridge spanning the river.

Heeding the warning sign next to the bridge, we crossed one person at a time. It sways and bobbles above the raging river -- a crossing that's probably not for those made weak-kneed by heights.

A quarter-mile before the bridge is a junction (which we didn't take) that leads hikers up to the gorgeous high meadows of Seattle Park and Spray Park. Those high areas were still snow-covered at the time of our hike, but many trails are melting out quickly and should be accessible toward the end of July.

A long day hike or overnight backpacking loop can be taken past Spray Park to Mowich Lake and eventually back to the Ipsut Creek Campground. It's an area renowned for its alpine wildflowers.

There are plenty of other places to roam in this corner of the park. The Mowich Lake Road, to the south of the Carbon River entrance, provides access to such places as Paul Peak -- a trail with spectacular views of Rainier -- and Tolmie Peak, a summit above elegant Eunice Lake.

Other hikes off the Carbon River Road include the dark forests of the Green Lake and Ipsut Creek trails, both providing lovely day hikes, but without views of the mountain.

Snow is melting out earlier than usual, thanks to a warm June, according to Mount Rainier National Park trail foreman Carl Fabiani. Storm damage in the park wasn't especially tough this year, although the Paul Peak Trail was an exception, requiring a month of chain sawing and intense work to clear fallen trees. "All that blow-down was about the worst I've seen in the 40 years I've been with the park," Fabiani said.

On the Carbon River Trail, there were no bears in sight, but the north face of the mountain loomed above. Far up on the mountain's upper reaches, cornices of snow and ice hung precariously over Willis Wall and Liberty Ridge -- the dangerous climbing route that already has taken the lives of three climbers this year.

Content to be 9,000 feet below that point, we followed the trail as it skirted below volcanic cliffs. It then ascended a moraine several hundred feet above the Carbon Glacier, which was named from a coal deposit discovered near there in the late 19th century.

MERYL SCHENKER/P-I

Hiking up the Carbon River Trail (part of the Wonderland Trail), writer Andrew Engelson, left, and Deb Villa of Puyallup get a tantalizing peek at the north face of Mount Rainier and the rock-strewn Carbon Glacier.

Coming down the trail was a party of a half-dozen women from the Rainier Women's Hiking Group, an informal association of hikers who get out on the trails twice a week each summer.

"We always end up returning to Rainier," said Lena Cushing of Bellevue, who was born in Switzerland and rates the park as one of her favorite hiking locales. "We've chosen to age in the woods and mountains," she said proudly. The hiking group of about 40 includes a woman in her 90s and quite a few in their 60s and 70s.

"Out on these trails, we energize each other," Cushing said. "It's better than staying at home and crocheting."

Soon the glacier came into view. If you want to get a close-up look at a glacier, this is the lowest elevation at which you can do it in the contiguous 48 states -- the snout of the Carbon Glacier is at just 3,600 feet. It also holds the distinction of being the most voluminous and thickest glacier in the lower 48, at one point more than 700 feet thick.

But don't come expecting brilliant white snow and blue-tinted ice. "Carbon" is a fitting name, since the ice behemoth is cloaked in dark gray gravel as it slowly grinds up the valley below. It's a dirty but impressive sight. Gray meltwater churns out of the glacier's terminus, and the seven-story mass of ice flakes off in huge sections like an enormous halibut fillet.

Tempting as it might seem to clamber down and touch the glacier, a few moments spent watching it in the midday heat will put those impulses to rest.

A loud crack reverberated across the valley as a trash can-size boulder plummeted down the glacier's face, stirring up dust as it bounced downward. As we sat eating our sandwiches, the glacier put on a show, dropping rocks it had plucked from high on the mountain in its slow, persistent march downhill.

Making his way down the trail at a much quicker pace was Terry Kipp, a solo hiker from Denver. Kipp was sampling portions of the Wonderland Trail on a series of day hikes. He'd covered 55 miles in six days.

"It's not as much fun as doing the continuous loop," he said, as the glacier continued to toss rocks into the valley behind him. "All that backtracking is a bit of a mind game." His favorite stretch of the Wonderland is Indian Henry's Hunting Ground, a meadow about seven miles above Longmire at the foot of the South Tahoma Glacier.

Kipp had hoped to hike the entire Wonderland Trail with his son, but after calling the Park Service in June, he'd discovered that many of the popular backcountry camps on the route had been reserved in early April. Now he was on his last day at the mountain and looked up at it wistfully.

Our lunch finished, it was time to head back down to the trailhead. We saw no sign of the resident bear, although we did spot a lone hairy woodpecker knocking on an old dead hemlock, and carpets of delicate twinflower.

Later, I talked with Bob Miller, a ranger with the Wilderness Information Center at Longmire. He agreed that many popular backcountry camps on the Wonderland Trail are snatched up soon after the reservation period opens in April. "We received close to 1,500 pages of faxes in the first few days," he said.

But Miller also noted that 40 percent of the backcountry sites are saved for backpackers on a first-come, first-served basis. They can be reserved at most park ranger stations the same week of your hike. Still, if you're interested in trekking the whole Wonderland, your best chance of success is to reserve early or plan to go in September, when mosquitoes have subsided and kids are back in school.

According to Miller, some 1,500 hikers complete the entire circuit each year.

For those with more modest aspirations, the low-stress Carbon River Trail is a fine introduction to the mountain that's such a familiar part of our skyline.

If you go

Getting there

• Driving -- To reach the Carbon River Trail, head south on state Route 410, taking a right on state Route 165 near Buckley, driving south through the towns of Wilkeson and Carbonado to a junction 10 miles south. Take the left fork on the Carbon River Road (the right is the Mowich Lake Road), and drive eight miles to the entrance of Mount Rainier National Park.
  
  
• Trailhead -- The Carbon River trailhead is another 5 miles beyond, near the Ipsut Creek Campground at elevation 2,300 feet. An entrance fee to the national park is charged.

Information

• Carbon River Trail Map -- Consult Green Trails map Mount Rainier West No. 269 or National Geographic Trails Illustrated Mount Rainier No. 217.
  
  
• Current Conditions -- For trail and other information on the northwest corner of the park, call the Carbon River Wilderness Information Center at 360-829-5127 or the Mount Rainier National Park Information Line at 360-569-2211.
  
  
• Guidebooks -- Numerous ones for the park exist, including "50 Hikes in Mount Rainier National Park" by Ira Spring and Harvey Manning (Mountaineers, 143 pages, $14.95) and "Best Easy Day Hikes: Mount Rainier" by Heidi Schneider (Falcon, 106 pages, $6.95).
  
  
• Wonderland Trail -- For information on hiking the entire 93-miles, call the Longmire Wilderness Information Center at 360-569-4453 or consult "Discovering the Wonders of the Wonderland Trail" by Bette Filley (Dunamis House, 224 pages, $13.99).
  
  
• Online -- Mount Rainier National Park's Web site is www.nps.gov/mora/. Trail information is at www.nps.gov/mora/trail/wonder.htm.

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