Cougar Rock, Mount Rainier!

September 22-26, 2025

I camped at Cougar Rock Campground, at the base of Mount Rainier, back in 2018, seven years ago. It’s time to go back!

Here’s a Google Earth image (below) looking straight down at Mt. Rainier. It’s just a little lump of snow, yes? Ha!!! Little, no! It’s huge. Except for Mt. Whitney in California, Mt. Rainier is the tallest mountain in the continental USA. It’s taller than any mountain in the Rocky Mountains … and it isn’t even IN the Rocky Mountains, it’s in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. It’s our mountain. 🙂

In the image below, “Longmire” is where many of the national park employees live. And there’s a very nice public restaurant there, and a museum, and some shops, and walks out along relatively level trails where you can see the flora (and the mountain). “Campsite” is where I’ll be camping, at Cougar Rock Campground. “Paradise” is the very large parking lot, handsome old Lodge where you can stay, a museum, facilities for more park employees, etc., and there are numerous, easy trails that lead up towards the mountain, some that lead all the way to the edge of the snow and ice, where some people then hike/climb all the way to the top of the mountain. But don’t think it’s just a walk in the park to the top of this mountain. Every year, a few people die doing that, mostly because they aren’t experienced, aren’t strong enough, or aren’t prepared with the proper equipment. Trust me, I won’t be climbing that mountain!

But I will be enjoying the views of the mountain. And I will be enjoying the forest, and the birds, and the rivers and lakes. But first, let’s get there! Hitch up the trailer and get on the road!

It’s about a two-hour drive from the trailer’s storage lot and up to Cougar Rock. It’s a wonderful country drive. In the photo below, I’m heading east on highway 702 between the very small town of McKenna and the turn onto the road that then leads to Mt. Rainier. This road is more than nine miles long, absolutely straight. That’s so unusual here in western Washington, there are just too many hills and mountains and valleys and rivers and lakes. But this is the exception. 🙂

I could see Mt. Rainier in the distance, still pretty faint. Mt. Rainier is about 36 miles away from me, as the crow flies.

 

At the end of that road, I turned right (south) onto highway 7, the National Park Highway. About 23 miles down that road (in the photo below), I caught another glimpse of Mt. Rainier. In these two photos, it’s only about 20 miles away … closing in. 🙂

 

Eventually, I arrived at the official entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park. There are usually two or three folks checking park passes or taking payment for entry, so the lines move fairly quickly.

Inside the national park, there are no homes or shops along the road. It’s truly just glorious forest with an occasional river that the road passes over, with a few wide spots where you can park and enjoy a view point out over a valley or a river.

And then this spot happens (below). I’m familiar enough now with the drive that I know this spot is coming. I always pull over before I get there and wait until no one is behind me so I can drive really slowly across the bridge and so I can stop and take a photo or two out my truck’s side window. The waterway under the bridge is Tahoma Creek. Tahoma is the original name of this mountain, used for thousands of years by native people.

 

The photo above is of the southwest side of Mt. Rainier, so most of the snow and ice have melted there after this year’s long, hot summer. The top of the mountain is now about ten miles from me.

And then I arrived at Cougar Rock Campground, found my campsite, and settled in, home at last. 🙂

My campsite was at elevation 3160 feet. The mountain in the photo below, my view to the southeast, was about 5,900 feet in elevation. It’s considered too small to be named!

In truth, it wasn’t a single peak but the western end of a long ridge, with many peaks of about the same elevation, although one was more than 6,000 feet according to Google Earth. I’d bet the entire ridge has a name, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.

This magnificent tree (below) was right next to the side of my trailer. Wow. You can see the trunk of it near the rear of the trailer in the photo above.

After getting settled in the campsite, I took a walk through the campground. By this late in the year (late September is late here, given how cold it gets up here in the winter) … by this late in the year, most of the campground is already closed, which gives the park employees several weeks to do maintenance work on those portions of the campground. So there wasn’t much campground left to walk through. But around one corner, I came upon this Scamp trailer (below), another brand of molded fiberglass trailer, very well made, just like Escape trailers are.

The owner was outside and waved. We chatted a bit. He said he had been walking too and noticed my Escape trailer. So we shared stories and made each other feel proud and wise to have chosen such superior brands of travel trailers. 🙂

Eventually, I made it back around to my campsite. The big white truck is on the left side of the photo below, parked in the campsite. As I walked up the road, about to turn left, I finally woke up and looked up … there, in the distance … it’s Mt. Rainier!

 

I couldn’t see the mountain from my campsite. But with just that 20-foot walk away from my campsite, there she was. And, again, you can see the dramatic difference between the east (snow and ice covered) side of the mountain, and the west side where everything has melted from this past summer’s hot, dry, weather.

That’s it for today. Gotta get dinner cooking. And it’s going to be a chilly night! I don’t have electricity at this campsite. I do have propane heat onboard but I don’t like to run that at night even though I have a propane sensor that I check every year. I really do want to wake up in the morning. So I’m going to add a blanket under me, as well as a couple more blankets on top. Cozy and warm. 🙂

More adventures to come, stay tuned.