Mount Wow

We started off the day parked just before the Nisqually entrance to Mount Rainer National Park. We tried to ask the rangers if it was okay where we parked, but the rangers were not there. We interpreted this as a go. Our party of six took off from our cars and found the boundary trail pretty close to someone’s cabin. We saw some SAR people here getting ready for training. The trail is nice and well defined all the way to the ridge at about 4000 feet. Since there was still no snow, we encountered a bit of bushes, but not that bad. Probably just a class 1.5 bushwhack. At about 4400 feet, we came across a knife-edgy rock that had snow on it. After putting our helmets on, we took our time crossing this rock since it was definitely a no-fall zone. After this rock, we stayed on the ridge a bit and found continuous snow at about 4800 feet. Some of us put on microspikes, but three of us did not. We also decided to take out our ice axes here since the runout was not favorable. At about 5200, we broke out of the trees and were greeted with nice views of the Glacier View Wilderness. From here, we just had about 400 feet more of minor sidehilling until we gained the ridge to the summit. Once we got to the ridge, we took a little break and had some food before the summit push. Nothing too notable happened from here to the summit, except the views of Mount Rainer kept getting better and better. Once reaching the top, a few of us went over to another high point on the ridge, thinking this other high point was the true high point. It was not, so no need to go over there. We stayed at the top for about 30 minutes. On the way down, one of us slipped and fell and had to self arrest. Thankfully, the only injuries were scratches and maybe a bruise. The rest of the way down went smoothly and we got back to our cars well before sunset. A nice 9+ hour day!