When we first drove into Mt. Rainier, we drove into grey, hazy obscurity.  We vaguely knew where Mt. Rainier was, but we couldn't exactly see it.  In fact, the volcano proved to be incredibly elusive, and we saw almost no sky until we left the National Park two days later. 

Some Longmire trails were open and pleasantly green.

Though it was nice trekking around Longmire, it became infinitely more exciting when we drove up to the higher elevation areas around Paradise.  Though we saw no sign of Mt. Rainier, we did get a brief glimpse of the Tatoosh range.  The half-buried Paradise Visitor center was actually rather spacious inside.  Accessing any of its facilities felt vaguely like I was traveling through a warren of tunnels and caves since most of it was still buried under several feet of snow.

It was exciting strapping on snowshoes and waterproof gear for a rather cold and wet tromp through the snow.  Paradise was buried under a twenty-five feet of snow, with almost five inches of fresh snow added daily.  "Saplings" in the snow were actually the tops of gigantic trees.  We traveled roughly six miles through four trails, some marked with flags and some visible only through the footprints of others.  Through it all snow fell persistently and steadily, and what was previously visible would disappear only a few moments later in a white out.  The higher you went the harder the wind blew and the harder it became to see.

For a brief moment the snow lightened a bit so we could see more of the landscape... and also how far we still had to go.  The tiny specks you see are people.

On our first day at the park we saw nary a soul, and it felt like we were the only visitors in the park.  But by the second, we saw a few alpine climbers trekking to their base camp via the glacier vista trail.  And when a tiny patch of sky broke through for a blissful hour, people turned out to play.

Though much of Mt. Rainier is closed at the tail end of a wet winter, what we did see was rather amazing.

In 2007, in my pre-SLR days, a few friends, Tony, and I joined a few travelers from the U.K. in the back of a rattling van that wound its way slowly through a tiny mountain pass in Norway.  We were on our way to Nigardsbreen, a tiny arm of Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier in Europe.  The road was sometimes so narrow that two cars couldn't pass through it, so oncoming traffic had to hug the side and wait for the other car to pass.

When we arrived it was a little surreal.  A boat docked at one end of the glacier-fed lake ferried us across, and Nigardsbreen, that seemingly tiny finger of the Jostedal Glacier, loomed over us, larger than life.

Being southern California bred, I wore practically all my clothes for this one, because despite the tiny glint of sunlight, it was cold.  Our host wore "knickers" (which looked sort of like capri pants to me), and seemed impervious to the temperature.  The two photos of us below were taken by my friend Shu Ping.  We fancied that we looked sort of like an REI ad (or maybe the Village people).

We drank the fresh water from one of the streams and on our hike back we got a little lost and encountered some errant sheep  (pictured above) that followed us partway back.  After climbing a few hills (crossing private property, no doubt) and meeting a few puzzled locals, we made it down just in time to meet our host, buy blueberries from a local farm, and return home.