Mt. Rainier / Anne's Birthday

Anne turned 30 on August 9th! That's right... 3...0... !
We hiked up to this little reflection pool just off of Plummer Peak in the Tatoosh range. I went up here last August to take pictures, but it was still frozen over. This year, it was so cloudy that I only got a few openings where I could see the mountain, most of the time we only saw the clouds.
We spotted two white mountain goats up near the top of the mountain, so after setting our camp up we climbed to the top, but they were nowhere to be seen.
The next morning it was so cold there was frost on our things. As I always do, I got up with the first light to take pictures of the sunrise. If you look closely, there is a crescent moon above Pinnacle peak.
Again, there was just a few breaks in the clouds, but when they blew by I was ready.
After this, the clouds came in so thick that I went back to sleep for an hour or two.
After we had finally gotten up, made coffee and oatmeal, and were packing up our things, who should show up but the mountain goats! It really was fun to see two animals that were so calm. At one point, the mom came up so close to me that Anne thought that she was going to attack me! In all my time at Mt. Rainier I've never had an experience like this.

As usual, the Marmots were everywhere just waiting to ambush us and steal our trail mix!
Christine Falls
Comet Falls
After all that hiking, we had to stop by Scale Burger in Elbe and I splurged and got an overload burger! Just like old times.