This past Saturday, Amy and I did one of our last training hikes before we actually begin our climb! We’re both nervous and know we want to train as hard as possible, but we’ve also both reached burnout. We can’t wait until we can have a weekend to relax, and only go hiking because we want to, not because we have to. But with only 2 more hikes to go, one of which will be a tapering hike (probably Tiger Mt again) right before we leave, we knew we couldn’t completely slack this weekend.

We decided Saturday morning that we were going to do Mt Defiance. We had done Bandera the previous weekend so were already well acquianted with the first part of the hike. But once you get to the fork in the trail, you go left towards Mason Lake to continue on to Mt Defiance, instead of right for the scramble up Bandera.

Once again, the views of Mt Rainier and the wildflowers were incredible.

The trail to Mason Lake climbs a little bit higher in elevation before you drop down into the lake basin. It’s absolutely stunning, and a great place to stop and rest for a bit.

This dog was so happy swimming in the lake! I wanted to join him!

I took more pictures of the wildflowers.

We hung out at the lake for about a half hour, then decided that we really had no interest in continuing on to Defiance.

Nope, not today.

So we headed back down the mountain, taking a few more pictures of Mt Rainier. It’s such a show off!

Since we only did about half the hike we were planning on doing, it only took us 4 hours to complete the 7 miles and 2500′ elevation gain. Maybe not as much as we should have done, but at least we got out. I’m planning to do a really hard hike next weekend with my friend Sarah, and then, like I mentioned above, probably Tiger Mt the following weekend. Then we’re off to start the real thing! Can’t believe it’s almost here!