Burroughs Mountain: The Most Scenic Hike in the PNW

Trip Report/ Day Hike

If there were an award for the most accessible, scenic, and enjoyable day hike in the Pacific Northwest, the winner hands-down would be Burroughs Mountain. With the luxury of doing this on a weekday, Ann and I met up with our friend Jim Burroughs (fittingly…) in Issaquah for a leisurely 8:30am start. From there, it’s a couple hour drive south to Mt. Rainier, which becomes particularly scenic once you enter the national park. Once inside the park, follow signs to the Sunrise Visitor Center, which has a large parking lot, restrooms, and an interesting mixture of everything from hard core hikers to first-time visitors to the great outdoors. We loaded up our day packs with our lunches and lots of water, and joined the throng of people on the broad trail heading up the ridge overlooking the visitor center.

History

Burroughs Mountain is named after John Burroughs (1837–1921), a federal bank examiner in Washington DC who developed an interest in the conservation movement and nature writing after meeting Walt Whitman in 1863. He was a prolific writer, and his books documented in minute detail everything about wildlife, in particular birds. In one of his more well-read books, The Ways of Nature, Burroughs describes an incident where his dogs treed a porcupine. Wishing to see what the dogs would do with the porcupine, he convinced one of the young men in their party to climb the tree and bring down the animal by shaking the branch to which it was clinging. As if this weren’t a bad enough idea, when the poor porcupine finally did come down from the tree, Burroughs whacked it on the nose with a stick “hoping to confuse him a little”, whereupon it curled up into a ball and rolled down the hill. Burroughs makes the dubious claim that he actually killed the animal with a slight blow to the snout, but surprisingly, expresses no remorse.

Burroughs reportedly visited Mt. Rainier several times, which is how the butte on the flank of the mountain got named after him, but doesn’t appear to have written specifically about the area. (Perhaps this was because he didn’t encounter any porcupines.) Nor is there any documentation that Burroughs ever set foot on the mountain that now bears his name, which might be just as well given that a quote attributed to him is, “Leap and a net will appear.”

Hiking Options

The Washington Trails Association description of the hike describes three different Burroughs Mountains, which they call “one, two, and three.” While on the trail, these are a bit indistinct, at least the first one, but they roughly correspond to the attrition of the hiking crowds as you proceed up the mountain. After a mile or two on a very wide trail you get to Frozen Lake, appropriately named, which is the water source for the Sunrise Lodge and various outbuildings. This appears to the the destination of lots of family groups with small children. Proceeding up the trail to the “second Burroughs Mountain” thins out the crowd to people with REI clothing and day packs. All the while, the views of Mt. Rainier are breathtaking at every glance, as the 14,411 foot high Cascade peak makes the hikers look like ants scurrying about on its flanks.

From the top of Burroughs 2.0, the trail heads down and westward, losing considerable elevation before proceeding back up again towards the top of Burroughs 3.0. Here I see my animal spirit from a distance, the marmot, which I revere and would never whack on the nose with a stick. Further up the trail, however, we hike through a herd of mountain goats, several of which have kids.

Finally arriving at the summit of Burroughs 3.0 (elevation 7,828), this makes for a beautiful place for the second portion of lunch, even if the broad expanse of the flat top lacks something of the drama of more sharply peaked mountains. Resting on top, we quickly noticed that Mount Rainier never does, as we first heard then witnessed one or two separate avalanches as the glaciers calved off huge blocks of ice, creating plumes of water vapor and crystals. Every now and then, there would be a loud bang of either rockfall or the crashing of ice in some crevasse.

Remembering Our Climb

Listening to the restless mountain recalled my climb of Rainier many years ago, which I did with several other climber friends. Although most people go through an outfitter like Rainier Mountain guides, we did our own trip, and chose the less traveled Sunrise route, which is steeper than the normal Muir route, but has a more direct path to the summit, and obviates the need to traverse the summit crater. Arriving at our summit camp some ways up the glacier, I remember we came upon a collection of a few tents belonging to other climbers, so we joined the little camp at what we thought was a respectful distance. It being something like 4:00 pm in the afternoon with the sun high overhead, we set up our tents and were playing hacky-sack in our climbing boots for something to do before dinner. All of a sudden, from the nearest tent an enraged voice cried out telling us to “stop making so much f*cking noise!” because they were trying to sleep ahead of their very early start. Perhaps not coincidentally, that party made a considerable amount of noise in departing camp at the ungodly hour of midnight, or something like that.

Being young and faster climbers, we waited until it was starting to get light at like 4:00 am to get up and get underway. The problem with climbing at night, as is vogue now on Rainier, is that this makes for such slower going. Waiting until we could see what we were doing, we passed almost all of our camp mates on the way to the summit. Usually bitter cold and windy on top, we had a very unusual day with almost no wind and sunny conditions. I took a nap on my Ensolite pad that I carried in my summit pack.

Parting Thoughts

The hike back to the trailhead was uneventful, even if it seemed longer than the distance out as is always the case. But the views of Rainier and the wildflowers appeared even more beautiful in the afternoon sun. Six years before he died at the ripe old age of 84, Burroughs published his book, The Breath of Life (1915), which begins, “As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin…” To this present-day reader, the book seems rather long-winded at times, like it would make a better TED Talk. But it is surprisingly modern in other ways, such as his discussion of the atom and electron. Some of what he writes, moreover, makes me think if he could have time-traveled to today, he would have made a good guest on the Sam Harris podcast, especially when he notes the tension between materialism and consciousness, as in this passage:

“In the following pages I am aware that two ideas, or principles, struggle in my mind for mastery. One is the idea of the super-mechanical and the super-chemical character of living things; the other is the idea of the supremacy and universality of what we call natural law. The first probably springs from my inborn idealism and literary habit of mind; the second from my love of nature and my scientific bent. It is hard for me to reduce the life impulse to a level with common material forces that shape and control the world of inert matter, and it is equally hard for me to reconcile my reason to the introduction of a new principle, or to see anything in natural processes that savors of the ab-extra.”

Nowadays, we might phrase this that things like consciousness or the spark of life are “emergent phenomena of complexity,” which sounds sophisticated but really means, “we have no idea.” Despite being a lifelong naturalist and disavowing all forms of the supernatural, Burroughs writes this entire book trying to answer the inevitable question (spoiler, he never really does):

“…but without a sense of the unknown and unknowable, life is flat and barren. Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature. How to get from the clod underfoot to the brain and consciousness of man without invoking something outside of, and superior to, natural laws, is the question.”

Walking down the final miles of the most beautiful hike I’ve been on in years, it occurs to me that Burroughs’ question strikes some as unthinkable because it would rob life of all meaning and purpose were we to accept that everything we see (including ourselves) is one big cosmic accident. This strikes me as backwards, however, as if scratching off the grand prize-winning lottery ticket would be depressing evidence of the pointlessness of hard work. Maybe so, but personally, I’ll accept my winnings, thank you very much.

Like this memorable day.

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Endnotes

1. Washington Trails Association hike description for Burroughs Mountain, with driving directions.
2. Published works of John Burroughs, free to download and read online.
3. Sam Harris podcast.

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