Chinook Pass below Rainier
— the pass with one mountain holding the sky.
Not only on a wall.
“State Route 410 climbs through forest from the east, crests at Chinook Pass on a stone-arched bridge built in 1932 for the Pacific Crest Trail, and drops back down toward Tipsoo Lake. Mount Rainier sits west of the pass, fourteen thousand feet of mountain that the visitor does not see fully until the moment of standing on the bridge and looking back. The Naches Peak loop opens by mid-July most years. Bear grass and avalanche lilies come up in the meadows around the small lake. The road over the pass closes when snow comes, usually November, and reopens in late May.
Chinook Pass below Rainier, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Chinook Pass is a 5,432-foot crossing of the Cascade Range on State Route 410, on the boundary between Mount Rainier National Park to the west and the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest to the east. The pass sits about thirteen miles east of Cayuse Pass and the park's east entrance. A stone-arched pedestrian bridge built in 1932 carries the Pacific Crest Trail over the highway at the pass; the bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Mather Memorial Parkway. Tipsoo Lake lies a half-mile west of the pass at about 5,300 feet.
Mount Rainier sits west of Chinook Pass, so the morning sun lights the mountain's east face first while the pass itself is still in shadow. Alpenglow on the Emmons and Fryingpan glaciers turns the upper mountain pink for a short window most clear mornings and again at sunset. The bridge over the highway frames a clean view of the summit, and the photograph that comes from there in early morning is one of the recognized Rainier compositions. Cloud lifts off the mountain through the late morning; afternoons are often hazy with smoke during fire season.
State Route 410 over Chinook Pass closes when winter snow comes, usually in mid-November, and the Washington State Department of Transportation reopens it in late May or early June depending on the snowpack. The Naches Peak loop trail around the pass typically clears by mid-July. Bear grass blooms in stretches every few years; the steadier display each summer is heather, lupine, and avalanche lily in the meadows by Tipsoo Lake. Larches do not grow at this elevation here, so the fall color is in vine maple and huckleberry rather than gold needles.