Beauty of Northwest Wilderness: Overnight in Camp Muir, Mt Rainier 2015

About the Camp Muir

Over the past three years, I scrambled a few times in the winter and spring near Mt Rainier. I can only enjoyed her beauty and majestic views from far away. Camp Muir is the base on the Mt Rainier at the elevation of over 10,000', lots of climbers stay there overnight, and then get to summit early next morning.

The route to Camp Muir can give the hikers some taste of alpine climbers experience. This year I prepared to scramble to Camp Muir and have overnight camp there so as to catch the sunrise.

Sketch view of Muir and Glaciers

Climb Route from Panorama Point to Camp Muir

Camping Permit

We four people arrived at the Longmire visitor center around 9:00am to apply the free overnight camping permit. Then drove to the west parking lots in Paradise visitor center, and found there are already lots of cars there, some are for those people who prepare the summit the next day, and others should be either day hike to Camp Muir or overnight camping in there, like us.

Get started

We started the scramble from Paradise parking lots at 10:00am. There are already lots of folks on the route to Panarama point.

Get started on the Paradise Parking Lots

Mt Adam and Mt St. Helen on the south

We run into the gear issues, and had a very slow start, and it was about 2:30 pm to arrive at Panorama point (30 minutes lunch included). From Panorama Point (6800'), it's pretty straight forward to follow the footprint toward Sugar Rock (7550').

Mt St. Helen from Sugar Rock

On the way up from Sugar Rock to Moon Rocks (9200'), It was actually a big snowfield. The snow was very soft, and made every step harder and harder. About 10 people ahead of us to summit the top the next day. They made very good steps for us to follow.

Follow forward to Moon Rocks

From the Moon Rocks, we didn't detour to Anvil Rock (9584'). We arrived at our destination about 6:30pm, very near sunset. We quickly set up the tent and prepared the dinner meal. Because of the location, we could only see little warm sunset far away the sky near Mt St. Helen

Mt St Helen from Camp Muir

Sunrise at Camp Muir

The little noise after midnight wake me up. It was little cold outside, I heard a dozen of climbers were doing the preparation for the summit. I got out of the tent about 1:30 am, and sent them away to conquer the top. Good luck!!!

I got up the next day at 5:00 am before the twilight. It was very cloudy, and just had about 10 minutes opening time to allow us enjoy the stunning sunrise.