Paragliding and Hiking near Seattle: Snow Lake and Rampart Ridge

These pictures were taken by Marcel Dettling and Corinne Dahinden on August 7th, 2005.

This is the beautiful Alpental Valley, where we started our hike to Snow Lake.

And this is the lake, in a beautiful alpine setting. It's about a 90 minute hike to get there.

The lake is even warm enough to go for a swim!

Good we got a 4WD with a bit higher clearance. This allowed us to drive to the paragliding launch at Rampart Ridge.

That's the view from launch. Conditions were perfect. Again, Mount Rainier (4392m) is in the background.

I pushed into this valley for a couple of XC kilometers. There were no landing options below, just a sea of trees.

Well, the lift was abundant and I was high in the air, so no worries. I even had time to take a picture of this nice alpine lake.

I safely made it back. The muddy, dry lakebed to the left of my foot tip is the landing field.

That's Rampart Ridge, where I launched. The LZ was (and usually is) very sporty, with strong winds and bumpy air.

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