Crystal Peak Trail: A Sunrise Summit Hike in Mt. Rainier

MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, WA:

Some questions arrive loudly. Others just sit quietly and wait. Long before daylight reached Crystal Peak, I travelled familiar roads, through Buckley and Enumclaw, beneath the night sky gently softening into day. Gratitude found me on the drive, the way it usually does. This time it wasn’t tied to something external. A little over a year ago I felt a nudge toward hiking. What began as a simple decision to spend more time on trails had become something far greater, shaping the way I moved through growth, uncertainty, grief, and the ordinary moments in between.

With my headlamp illuminating the first stretch of trail, dawn was still hidden beyond the trees. The snowmelt Crystal Creek was rushing beneath the single-log bridge I crossed to begin my hike. In the first mile, my breath, my footsteps, and my trekking poles refused to find the same rhythm, like instruments trying to find the same note before the symphony settles into their first movement. My drive wasn’t the only familiar path as I’d walked these switchbacks on the lower trail last fall on my way to Crystal Lakes. It was the season’s first snow, and I still remember standing there knowing the mountains were about to vanish for months. Today, returning in a different season, on a different trail, made it feel new, fresh. At the summit, the Pacific Northwest opened up in every direction, Rainier holding the western skies while surrounding mountains folded off into the horizon. I removed my pack and sat on a rock with no one around. It became clear the mountain wasn’t offering an answer. It was offering something better, silence.

All morning, a small question traveled beside me. Not a problem to solve, but a feeling to understand. Lately, I’ve sensed the uncomfortable pull of a chapter ending, though I cannot yet name what was ending or what may follow. Somewhere between the forest shadows and the open summit ridge, I began to wonder if the most important part of a transition is not the ending or the beginning, but learning how to sit patiently at the space in-between. Snow becomes runoff, spring becomes summer, darkness becomes daylight, and none of it seems concerned with naming the moment it’s in. I think there’s a lesson for me in that.

The Journey…

I started up the Crystal Peak Trail before sunrise with my headlamp cutting through the darkness and the sound of Crystal Creek rushing below a single-log bridge. The forest smelled of damp timber and what winter had left to decay. Looking up through the canopy of trees, I could tell dawn was arriving somewhere beyond the forest, but down among the switchbacks it still felt like night. The climb gained elevation quickly, and for a while my breathing, footsteps, and trekking poles all seemed a bit out of sync. It reminded me of the moment before a symphony begins, when each instrument is still finding the note everyone will eventually share. My trail thought this morning was about the space between something ending and something yet to start. It’s not the destination and doesn’t feel like the journey, but just as important all the same.

The lower trail was familiar, I had walked it last fall on my way to Crystal Lakes during the season’s first snowfall. I still remember standing there knowing winter was arriving and that these mountains would soon disappear under snow for months. That, and the pack of wolves I encountered as I climbed through the snow to Sourdough Gap. Returning now in a different season, on a different trail, made the journey something new and just as special. As dawn slowly worked its way into the forest, my body shifted into rhythm and my mind settled down. Through gaps in the trees I caught glimpses of Mount Rainier glowing in the early sunlight while I remained tucked in the shade. Higher up, the trees thinned and the trail narrowed through meadows where wildflowers lingered past their spring entrance. Reaching the summit ridge, I saw Crystal Lake below, serene, looking like a turquoise bowl. Three Way Peak was also rising in the distance, and the Pacific Northwest opened in every direction: Rainier dominated the western skies, while other Cascade peaks and endless folds of mountains faded into blue.

Sitting on a warm rock in the morning sun, with the wind moving across the summit and no one else around, I realized the mountain was not offering me an answer. It was offering something quieter. The space between chapters does not always need to be solved or even explained. Sometimes it simply needs to be lived. Nature moves through transitions without announcing them. Snow becomes runoff, spring becomes summer, darkness becomes daylight. It doesn’t seem concerned with naming the moment it occupies. I sat in that moment for a while with my pack off and the mountains spread around me for as far as I could see, and the uncertainty I had carried uphill no longer felt like a concern. It felt more like a changing season. The descent brought me back through the meadows and into the forest, past hikers whose faces lit up when Mount Rainier came into their view. Near the end, I crossed Crystal Creek again on that same narrow-log bridge, with the snowmelt rushing beneath my feet. I returned to the trailhead carrying the same unanswered question I had started with, but without the same urgency to resolve it.

Gratitude…

Gratitude came before the hike even began, as it typically does when driving to my next waypoint. Up at 3 AM, I settled into a familiar direction toward Chinook Pass, traveling through Buckley and Enumclaw with Kelly’s playlist on shuffle, which kept me guessing on the next song. It was a route I knew well, though one I travel less often during the winter months when the pass is closed for the season. Somewhere along those quiet miles, with night fading away into day, and plenty of space to think, my attention turned inward. The gratitude I carried was different from what usually finds me on these early morning drives. It wasn’t tied to something external. It was focused on something within me, though not in a self-congratulatory way. It felt more like appreciation for a gift I had been given rather than credit for something I had earned.

A little over a year ago, a thought or feeling, maybe both, nudged me toward hiking. At that time, I thought I was simply taking up a new activity, something to keep me busy and to provide room to think while immersed in nature, but it became much more than that. The trails have provided me space for reflection unlike anything else. They give me several dedicated hours to carry a single thought, consider it from different angles, and stay with it long enough to move beyond the easy answers, week after week. More than sixty hikes later, with just as many “trail-thoughts”, I have spent a few hundred hours doing exactly that. Yet my gratitude today wasn’t for the number of hikes, hours, or even for the trail-thoughts themselves. It was for whatever guided me in this direction and a gentle nudge forward. My time spent on the trails has strengthened me in ways I never expected. They helped steady my mind, giving me perspective during uncertain times, and taught me that not every problem needed to be solved the moment it appeared.

As I approached the trailhead around 4:30 AM, the sky held a very subtle glow, just enough to reveal the outline of the mountain I was about to summit. I found myself reflecting on how much these hikes had changed me. Or perhaps they didn’t change me at all. Maybe they simply opened doors to let my innermost honest self out? Time and again, they reminded me that there is something larger than me, a humbling reminder that my problems may be smaller than they feel. The mountains have a way of shrinking life’s noise without dismissing it, giving it context. What once felt overwhelming often became temporary when viewed against something older, bigger, and far more resilient. That perspective may be the greatest gift these trails have given me. It helps me keep my attention on purpose rather than distraction, meaning rather than noise. Before I had taken a single step on The Crystal Peak Trail, I was already grateful for the path that had led me there.

Reflections…

The trail-thought I carried up Crystal Peak was small, two words I’ve met before: What’s next? The trail climbed steadily through shaded subalpine forest, eventually opening to meadows lined with alpine fir and spruce, with a front-seat view of Mount Rainier, and distant peaks of fellow volcanoes. I’ve been sensing a familiar undercurrent from a distance. A persistent feeling that something is shifting inside, like maybe a chapter is ending or has ended, and another wants to begin, even though I can’t name it. Somewhere along my climb, I realized I wasn’t searching for an answer as much as I was trying to understand this feeling that had settled into my life in recent weeks. In a way, it’s the slow arrival that has made the feeling more unsettling.

I know the feeling well enough to recognize it, but this time it approached me over time. It’s a feeling that came after graduation night, after our wedding, and after we folded the chairs at Kelly’s celebration of life. Each time it arrived like that silence in a parking lot after a concert, with the noise still ringing while the world emptied out around me. There was always an event to explain it, a clear before and after, so I knew which life I was leaving even when I had only sketches of a map for the one ahead. I read somewhere, though it didn’t mean much to me then, that some refer to this as liminal space, a place in-between, when the old no longer quite fits, but the new has yet to take shape. But before, my attention had a clear anchor: finishing school, preparing for a wedding, caring for Kelly, organizing her celebration of life. Now, I have that same feeling, that something is ending and another is needed, but I’m perplexed about what is ending, and even more uncertain about where it’s going.

As the trail climbed through the initial switchbacks, I found myself thinking about how much of the last few years had been defined by survival. First there was fighting (for life), then caregiving, and finally grief. All gave structure and purpose to my days, even when I may not have wanted them to. They demanded attention and left little room for much else. Lately, though, I’ve started to feel the permanence of Kelly’s absence in a different way. Not intellectually. I understood that reality from the beginning. This felt like a deeper truth, untouchable, and harder to explain. It was the recognition that this isn’t a temporary chapter I’m moving through. It’s the book itself. This is the landscape of my life now, and whatever comes next has to be built within it. I’m learning that denial in grief isn’t an all-or-nothing refusal to accept reality. It’s subtler than that, more like a valve that lets loss through in pieces I can carry. Over time, I’ve evolved to a different kind of acceptance that has emerged through repetition of her not being here for countless everyday moments, something that is beginning to feel more permanent. A recognition that hurts, but also cracks the door open to a new kind of space, one I have yet to step through.

Recently, that realization has shown up in ordinary places. For the past couple years, the yard and the domestic rhythms of cleaning and tinkering with stuff around the house, felt beyond reach. They simply did not matter to me, or at least enough to place priority on them. But this week, I felt a pull back toward these small, regular responsibilities. It felt significant to deep clean the area out back, opening it up once again to a welcoming space. It seems like I’ve been slowly reconnecting with spaces around the house little by little. This was less about how the space looked and more about reclaiming a sense of continuity and control. These routine tasks used to be in the natural flow of my days, but this week, it felt like a big deal. Perhaps a small sign that some part of me is ready to re-engage with the everyday world. Revisiting past trail-thoughts, I see that some reflections hinted toward a new identity that might need to be radically different. When in reality, this ‘new identity’ may just need to rebuild itself through engagement in ordinary routines, only under a new context. Perhaps I should consider reframing the mundane as meaningful, and embrace patience in an iterative process of transformation.

By the time I started my careful descent from the summit, I wasn’t carrying a solution. What I carried instead was a little more acceptance of the question itself. Maybe “what’s next” isn’t something that reveals itself all at once. I am learning to be okay with the idea that what is next might just be the slow, humble work of tending to the life that remains. Standing on Crystal Peak, I acknowledged that I was somewhere between chapters, in that liminal space. Not lost, not finished, just not fully arrived. For now, I’ll just keep walking with the question and trust that the path ahead will become clearer one step at a time. The path continues.

-Ken