Wonderland Trail Mount Rainier – Must Hike Must Eat

Editor’s note: the lottery for backcountry permits for the Wonderland Trail at Mount Rainier National Park opens on February 12th, 2024. It is just the lottery and it is open until March 4th. You can apply any time during that window and have the same luck as someone who applies when it opens. Starting March 14th, the lucky ones who are drawn will be notified and get to start selecting their desired permit days on March 21st. The permits are highly sought after and few get an entire circuit. Anything not swiped up by lottery winners will be available on April 25th. Find out more here.

I got tired to being asked if I had hiked Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier, so I threw my application for a permit into the hat in 2015 following the advice I found in Tami Asar’s Hiking the Wonderland Trail. Who knew I would be lucky enough to win two permits?

She wrote something in her book like “Only attempt a 7 day schedule if you are a superhuman hiker or if you like to defy the Beast of Ultimate Challenge by looking deep into his pitiless eyes.” So, I chose a 6 day trip. Don’t challenge me like that. I opted for a counterclockwise route starting at Sunrise. We hiked in Sunday afternoon and out Saturday at lunch. We, also, went with the Spray Park route rather than Mowich and had a resupply box at Longmire.

Our itinerary looked something like this:

Prelude: Park at Sunrise and hike in 1.2 mile to camp at Shadow Lake in the afternoon. Ate dinner at Second Burroughs. (I don’t really count this as an actual day hiking the Wonderland, more like a “pre-hike” day)

Day 1: Hiked to Cataract Valley, 15.3 miles

Day 2: Hiked to North Fork Puyullap River, 22.3 miles

Day 3; Hiked to Pyramid, 16 miles

Day 4: Hiked to Paradise River, 7.3 miles (we had breakfast and a break at Longmire)

Day 5: Hiked to Indian Bar, 16.2 miles

Day 6: Hiked to Sunrise and our car, 14.4 miles

You can click on each day to see my write ups of how they went.

What an amazing time and the perfect way to get a taste of what hiking in Washington State has to offer. Your walk around Mount Rainier takes you through such a variety of landscape, from old growth forests to lakeshores to barren rockscapes. I will definitely be back to check out more side loops in the Mt. Rainier National Park.

If you make it through all the pictures to the end, you’ll notice that they end before our trip did. At some point after Panhandle, I think I simply got tired of taking my fogged up camera out of my pocket and called it a wash. You’ll only have to imagine what Summerland looked like, just like I will since there was nothing really to see that day.

I wrote more about the park here:

You can also find links to the resources I used on my PCT/PNT/Wonderland page.

Starting in 2024, Mount Rainier National Park is going to a timed entry system similar to many national parks. If you do not have wilderness permits or camping permits, you will be need a timed entry to enter the park from 7am to 3pm, peak hours. You can find out all the details on the parks website here.

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