Mount Rainier reflection in Reflection Lakes
— the morning the lake takes the mountain.
Not only on a wall.
“Reflection Lakes sit on Stevens Canyon Road, about a mile and a half southeast of Paradise, at roughly 4,860 feet on the south side of Mount Rainier. On still mornings the upper lake takes the mountain entirely onto its surface: the white summit, the dark forest, the early sky. Wind erases it in minutes. Most photographers come before sunrise; by mid-morning the air moves and the mountain returns to the sky alone. The lakes are shallow and fed by snowmelt, so the water level drops through the dry months. The view is best in the first weeks of July, while the meadow above is still in bloom.
Mount Rainier reflection in Reflection Lakes, 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.
Reflection Lakes lie along Stevens Canyon Road in Mount Rainier National Park, at about 4,860 feet, roughly a mile and a half southeast of the Paradise visitor area. There are two small lakes, an upper and a lower, fed by snowmelt from the surrounding ridges and from the Tatoosh Range to the south. Stevens Canyon Road was completed in 1957, connecting Paradise to Ohanapecosh on the east side of the park and making the loop drive possible. The pull-off at the upper lake has been a stop on the drive since. Mount Rainier itself rises to 14,411 feet about four miles north, its south face anchoring the reflection that gives the lakes their name.
The lakes are shallow tarns, no more than about ten feet at their deepest, filled by snowmelt and groundwater rather than a stream inflow. There is no surface outlet at the upper lake, which is why the surface goes glassy on calm mornings: there is no current under the skin. The reflection depends on three things in combination: a clean lake surface, very low wind, and clear air above the summit. The first hour of light is the most reliable for all three. By late August the lake levels drop substantially as the snowmelt slows, exposing mud along the shore that changes the foreground. Frogs and rough-skinned newts live in the basin.
The lakes are at their best in the first hour after sunrise, before thermal winds rise off the slopes and break the surface. Photographers typically arrive about forty-five minutes before sunrise to set up at the eastern shore of the upper lake, with Mount Rainier's south face filling the view across the water. The mountain catches alpenglow first on the summit ice, around the time the sun crosses the Tatoosh ridge to the east. By mid-morning the air moves and the reflection is gone. Stevens Canyon Road typically opens at the end of May or in June, and the pre-dawn window stays open from then through late September.