Returning To Paradise: Restoring The Meadows At Mount Rainier

Editor’s note: Traveler’s Rebecca Latson recently visited Mount Rainier National Park to add to her photo collection of fall colors in the National Park System. During her stay, she took a hike and encountered two Park Service employees busy at work with a revegetation project. While she struck up a conversation and learned more about the work, the National Park Service did not want us to identify the workers or quote them since the Traveler had not in advance asked permission to do so. If we allowed the Park Service to review the story “for accuracy,” we were told they might agree to let us publish it with the employees quoted. This attempt at prior restraint goes against the principles of a free press. Rather than suppress this positive story of the Park Service working to protect Mount Rainier’s meadows, we are running the article without the employees named or quoted.

How many of you have noticed small signs along the hiking trails at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State, informing you of meadow repair and warning you not to go off trail? If you are a repeat visitor, you’ve probably seen the same sign along the same trail for years. You wonder when they will come pick up that sign because the meadow looks just fine to you.

In truth, the meadows at Mount Rainier really are still undergoing repair and can take between 60-80 years for a full restoration, depending upon whether or not National Park Service employees are giving Mother Nature a helping hand.

During a recent visit to the park, I huffed and puffed my way along Deadhorse Creek Trail at the Paradise area and looked up into the distance to see a young man carrying what appeared to be a garden flat of lush, bright green grass. He looked more like a clerk at a grocery store than a member of the National Park Service.

Naturally, I had to stop and chat for a moment.

The ranger and a colleague explained that the Park Service has been working on restoring the grass area along Deadhorse Creek Trail for more than two decades. While much progress has been made, they noted that each summer more trampling occurs.

I jokingly asked if the process for picking restoration areas consisted of closing their eyes and pointing to a spot on the park map. It’s a little more detailed than that, I learned.

They look for where the most damage has occurred, replant native vegetation, and rope off the area with hopes the public will observe the closure.

The focus is mainly on Paradise because it is the highest-visited area of the park, however, it’s not the only place where meadow restoration has been applied. There has been history of doing restoration in the Sunrise area, and if you hike around the Sunrise Nature loop trail, which includes a portion of the Sourdough Ridge Trail, you will see meadow repair signs, at least one of which has been there for 15 years, when I first started visiting the park.

Campgrounds at Sunrise have been decommissioned and revegetated too, I was told. A visit with Google informed me there were three Sunrise campgrounds:

• A car campground that operated from the 1930s until it was decommissioned and converted into a backpacker-only campground in 1973.
• A separate campground near Shadow Lake was closed and replaced by a smaller, walk-in campground, making it more accessible for first-time backpackers and children.
• The main, more developed campground at Sunrise near the visitor center which was converted into a picnic area, offering scenic views of the park. 

I learned that restoration work will proceed at Ohanapecosh Campground near the Stevens Canyon Entrance once the major renovation project which has closed the campground for 2025 is completed.

Where do the plants for the revegetation projects come from? The park’s greenhouse. Seeds are collected from the park, propagated in the greenhouse, and then plugged back into the ground.

When they do add the plugs, it will still take around 60 years for the area to look like the natural landscape. That’s a long time, but not as long as it would take for nature to handle the job without help, I was told.

I didn’t visit for very long with the two workers. They were kind enough to take time to talk to me, but they needed to return to their work. So, I continued along the trail, noticing a large patch of grass plugs. Were they recent or older? I don’t know. I was told earlier than any plugs I see around this trail could be up to 20 years old.

Mount Rainier park staff created a page and video with more detailed information regarding meadow preservation.

Featured In The Traveler

Reviving Mount Rainier’s Wildflower Wonders

Ask visitors to Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state to give you their most iconic memory, and many will grab their phone and scroll to photos of the wildflower meadows of Paradise. These thousands of acres of blooms provide a spectacular contrast of color to many of our favorite photos of the mountain. The alpine and sub-alpine meadows are some of the most accessible in the Cascade Mountains.

Unfortunately, this accessibility has led to decades of heavy use and off-trail hiking, leaving many of the areas trampled and bare. Reviving and maintaining these meadows for future generations is one of the many important park projects Washington’s National Park Fund donors make possible.

To read more of the article, head over to this page.