Steep hikes and bear alarms

Sometimes serious effort is needed to get to something special

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Mt. Rainier National Park is one of those parks that is really best experienced by the physically fit; almost everything is on a slope (yeah, it’s a mountain, after all!) and the main activities are stunning and precipitous hikes. For the less adventurous or in shape, driving through the park is still a visual feast.

Mike and I did one short hike straight down from the Sunrise location that ended at a small, gemlike green lake. Once at the bottom, we were overheated and rewarded ourselves with a swim in our underwear, scaring the amphibious “water dogs” inhabiting the shallows, salamander-like creatures native to the park whose like I’d never seen before.

But the trouble with a hike that goes straight down is that you have to go straight back up again later, or vice versa. After that adventure our knees (Mike) and hip (me) complained shrilly that we needed a day or two of rest.

Having driven around the park and seen the sights in the way of the elderly and semi-fit, we ran out of things to do that weren’t steep hikes. The days were heating up, so at my request to “find a waterfall,” Mike located a trail to one called Angel Falls, located just outside the park. The path was described as fairly short, and the trail supposedly went underneath the waterfall, an apex hiking experience. 

Finding Angel Falls Trail turned out to be a geocaching adventure with the GPS on our phones. 

We wound our way out of Mt. Rainier NP onto tiny forest roads, taking several wrong turns, until Lady Google announced suddenly, “You have arrived.”

We stopped in the deserted road. There was nothing to see but a stretch of wooded shoulder with hardly a pullout, let alone a sign. The only vehicles around appeared to be white work trucks, and they were perched precipitously along a ditch. 

“I don’t know about this,” I said.

Right on cue, a young man in rough clothing carrying a hatchet bounced up from the foliage like a wood elf ready for combat. “Is this the way to Angel Falls?” I asked.

“Sure is,” he said. “We’re rebuilding the trail to make it safer and give better access. Go up the road a hundred yards or so and you’ll see the trailhead on your right.”

Sure enough, we discovered a dirt area large enough to park in further up. A parting in the ferns on the side of the road indicated the unmarked trail. 

We grabbed our water bottles, put Koa on his leash, and headed up, up, up a slope through dense forest. We finally paused to catch our breath, looking out through a break in the woods into a canopy of conifers and deciduous trees.

“I hoped this was going to be a little more level than the park trails,” I complained.

“You wanted a waterfall. Waterfalls need a slope,” Mike said logically.

“Hmph.” I was unable to say more, too out of breath, as we were now heading straight up a mountain. I was in the lead (since otherwise long-legged Mike got too far away) when up ahead of us, I spotted a flash of movement--a large black shape running away up the trail!

“It’s a bear! There’s a bear on the trail!” I whisper-shouted to Mike.

I’m afraid of bears. REALLY afraid of them. 

I have worked hard to get over this. We are often out in bear country, and shrieking and startling at every little moving bush is silly.

But now I’d actually seen a bear, and I wasn’t going any further. I called Koa and put his leash on. “I’m going back.”

“It was probably a black bear, and it ran away. I doubt it would bother us. I’ll go see if it’s still up ahead.” Mike forged up the trail alone, clapping his hands loudly to alert the bear of our presence.

Meanwhile, I stood with my back against a tree, scanning around. I picked up Koa and clutched him in my arms; I didn’t want him to become a snack.

Mike disappeared around a curve. 

I waited a bit, then lost my nerve at his disappearance. I began heading back downhill.

“Toby! Come see this!” Mike shouted from somewhere up the path.

Had he found a baby bear maybe? But I didn’t want to see a bear in any form. 

Where there were baby bears, there were mama bears.

“No! I don’t want to see the bear!” I hollered back. 

“You have to come see this.” The humor in his tone told me there was nothing to fear.

What could it be?

I set Koa down and headed back up the trail—and suddenly an enormous, furry, big black dog appeared, its tail wagging and mouth open in a tongue-lolling grin.

I smacked my forehead in embarrassment as the dog’s owners appeared behind their loose pet. “I thought your dog was a bear,” I confessed. 

“Well, that’s a first! We should have him on a leash, but we thought no one was around,” the woman said. 

Her husband leashed the dog and we exchanged pleasantries as Mike rejoined us. “Is the trail all uphill?” I asked. “Is Angel Falls worth it?”

“Yes it’s all uphill, but the falls is great,” the woman said. “Keep going and turn right at the fork!”

Mike enjoyed teasing me about the “bear,” and that distracted us a bit from the elevation.

We took a right at the fork, and after a bit of a scary stretch of hiking in the lee of a gigantic loose shale cliff, we found Angel Falls.

The trail did indeed go under the waterfall, and we splashed around and cooled off. And, the best thing about it was that the trail went down all the way back. 

Sometimes, you just have to push past a hill and a bear to see something special.

P.S. THanks for hitting the ❤️ and joining us on our adventures!