Our original plan for this day was to hike up to Summerland, the highest section of the Wonderland Trail. However, due to several extenuating circumstances, we decided on a shorter and much less popular hike to the top of McNeeley Peak. There is no official trail, but it looked easy enough on paper. Birdie again picked me up, and we had breakfast at Charlie's about an hour earlier than we had the previous week. Birdie graciously offered to drive us up to Sunrise, as she had the previous week, and it was sure nice being chauffered around! The weather was once again great up at Sunrise as we hit the trail. We made it to the Huckleberry Creek trail intersection on Sourdough Ridge, where we decided to take a shortcut and dropped down a large steep talus slope into the meadow belowMcNeeley Peak. Technically, you aren't supposed to hike off-trail in the Sunrise area, so it may have been quite fortunate that we weren't pulled over by any rangers.



Here we see the various views from the top of a very rocky McNeeley Peak. Getting up there was somewhat of a challenge, at least the way our expedition leader (Dad) took us. We had some thick trees and brush and a tiny but of rock scrambling to do, but both were fairly short. The view from McNeeley is somewhat similar to that from Dege Peak, except that Sourdough Ridge, being about the same height as McNeeley, blocks a good portion of the view towards Rainier and Sunrise. I was given the honor of finding the route back down to the meadow, and think we managed to get down with quite a bit less brush and scrambling than we encountered going up. Instead of climbing up the steep rockslide, we crossed the meadow to the Huckleberry Creek trail and climbed the half dozen switchbacks to get back on top of the ridge. Near the intersection, we paused for a snack and enjoyed a little breeze, and saw another hiking first. A guy and girl were walking down the trail, and the girl was walking barefooted! Granted, the trails at Mt. Rainier are among the nicest anywhere, but you certainly couldn't say they were without rocks! Not surprisingly, the couple came back the other direction just a few minutes later. Back on the main trail, we again rain into the swarms of people, though this week it seemed to be a rather different crowd than before, though I couldn't put my finger on just how. Birdie and I had a ice cream sundae while Dad again had a soda. We noted that once again, nobody passed us the entire hike!