Mount Rainier - Part 2

So, I took a midweek excursion to Mount Rainier today.  As far as work was concerned, I was taking a sick day.  As far as I was concerned, it was a long overdue mental health day!  After leaving alarmingly early (4.45 am!), I headed to the Paradise area on the south side of the mountain.  This is the most developed area, but in my opinion not as photogenic as the Sunrise area I blogged about recently.  I left early to avoid the traffic, and because it was a weekday there were a lot less people there so I had a lot of the trails to myself.  However, did mean that I hit a load of traffic heading home (probably not helped by a tree falling down and blocking the exit road out of the park, that myself and some other drivers had to move!).  It was tough going - I struggled with a lot of the elevation changes, and probably over-exerted myself and am probably going to feel it in my legs for the next few days.  The photos are probably going to look fairly similar to the ones I posted on Paradise, but are subtly different with the slight change in aspect (sadly resulting in a lot of airplane contour trails behind the mountain...).

As a bonus, look carefully at the seemingly innocuous photo below - see if you can spot the bear that I saw!  (This is where I regret taking photos from my phone rather than a camera with actual decent zoom!)