Skyline Trail wildflowers at Paradise
— the week the meadow turned to colour.
Not only on a wall.
“The Skyline Trail climbs out of Paradise into the meadows above timberline. For a few weeks each summer the slopes go thick with lupine, paintbrush, and avalanche lily, all of it under the south face of the mountain. The bloom is short and the snow is never far away. People walk the loop slowly, stepping around seed heads, watching the marmots and the weather move across the ridge at the same time.
Skyline Trail wildflowers at Paradise, 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 at roughly 5,400 feet on the south flank of Mount Rainier, the 14,411-foot stratovolcano that anchors Mount Rainier National Park in Pierce County, Washington. The Skyline Trail is a 5.5-mile loop out of the Paradise visitor area that climbs through subalpine meadow to Panorama Point at about 6,800 feet, with the Nisqually Glacier in full view. The trailhead is reached by the Paradise Road, one of the most heavily visited corridors in the National Park System.
The meadow bloom is brief. Snow at Paradise often lingers into July, and peak wildflower color usually runs from late July through mid-August, depending on the snowpack that winter. Avalanche lily comes first as the snow recedes, then lupine, magenta paintbrush, bistort, and pasqueflower. John Muir walked these slopes in 1888 and called them the most extravagantly beautiful alpine gardens he had seen. By early September the seed heads are out and the first new snow is on the high ridges.
The Paradise corridor is the busiest part of Mount Rainier National Park, and in summer 2024 the park introduced a timed-entry reservation for the Paradise and Sunrise corridors during peak hours. Parking at Paradise often fills before mid-morning on clear summer days. The park entrance fee is $30 per vehicle for seven days. Stay on the paved and gravel tread of the Skyline loop; the meadow soils take decades to recover from a single footprint off-trail.