I'm fortunate enough to have gotten a Winter internship with the National Park Service on Mt.Rainier. Work entails checking and reporting the weather, snowshoe patrol, registering back country users and climbers, search and rescue, and much much more.
My time in the park started on January 10th just over a week of the New Year's tragedy here on the mountain. One of the parks rangers was shot and killed by a violent visitor a suspect in another recent shooting in Seattle. The shooting resulted in a several day man hunt and shutdown of the park. In the end the mountain got the killer.
By the time I arrived everyone who was still here was exhausted and in some form of shock. You could feel it in the mountain its self.
The weather has been dumping a mix of Colorado style powder instead of the usual Cascade cement, and Washington's special: rain. We had a 14" day last week which was exciting but did nothing to help the search efforts. Due to the conditions the search was only able to have aircraft (2 helicopters, 1 fixed wing) for one day.
Learning lots and excited for the weekend as it has finally calmed down around here after nonstop SAR for two weeks. Of course it is just in time for the weekend which means people and lots of them.
