Mount Rainier from Paradise wildflower meadows
— the short bright week the meadow forgets the snow.
Not only on a wall.
“The Paradise meadows sit at about 5,400 feet on the south slope of Mount Rainier, under a snowpack that doesn't fully leave until late June. By mid-July the avalanche lily and broadleaf lupine and subalpine paintbrush take the slope back; by mid-September the colour is gone. The bloom lasts about a month. John Muir walked here in 1888 and called it the most extravagant alpine garden he had ever seen. Most of what he wrote about is still here, though more people are too. The view from the Skyline Trail loop looks straight up the Nisqually Glacier to the summit.
Mount Rainier from Paradise wildflower meadows, 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.
Paradise sits on the south slope of Mount Rainier at about 5,400 feet, reached by State Route 706 through the Nisqually entrance, the only road into the park that stays open through winter. The mountain itself rises to 14,411 feet, an active stratovolcano anchoring a 369-square-mile park Congress established in 1899, the fifth national park in the country. The Paradise Inn, built between 1916 and 1917 from Alaska yellow cedar timbers salvaged from the Silver Forest above the meadow, still serves meals through the summer season. The Henry M. Jackson Memorial Visitor Center sits a short walk up the road. The viewpoint from the meadow looks straight up the Nisqually Glacier to the summit.
The wildflower bloom at Paradise typically runs from mid-July through August, with avalanche lily, broadleaf lupine, subalpine paintbrush, magenta paintbrush, bear grass, and pasque flower opening in succession as the snowpack retreats. Paradise holds one of the snowiest records in North America: the 1971 to 1972 winter measured 1,122 inches at the ranger station, a world record at the time. By late June the meadow is still half-buried; by mid-September the colour is gone. The narrow window is the whole reason the name stuck. A member of the Longmire family, climbing up from their hot springs lodge below in 1885, reportedly said the place looked like paradise, and the meadow has carried the name since.
At 5,400 feet Paradise sits above the temperate rainforest belt of the Nisqually corridor and below the rock-and-ice zone of the Muir Snowfield. The subalpine air is thin enough that visitors arriving from sea-level Seattle, about 95 miles north, often feel the climb on the Skyline Trail loop, which gains roughly 1,700 feet over five miles to Panorama Point. Afternoon weather can turn quickly: marine clouds push onto the slope from the south and the mountain disappears in minutes. The pattern is stable enough that Paradise rangers post a daily summit forecast issued by the Northwest Avalanche Center. Mornings are the most reliable time for a clear view of the upper mountain.