Discover the 51 best day-hike trails in and around Washington State's scenic Mount Rainier. Now fully updated for climate-change impacts to trails and ADA accessibility, the Day Hike series is perfect for national park enthusiasts and people who want to spend their days in the mountains and their nights at home. Whether you start from the Paradise area or Longmire or Mowich Lake, the 51 incredible hikes in this popular guidebook feature the stately forests, mountain vistas, alpine meadows, and glacial meadows unique to Mount Rainier. Each trail is rated from easy to extreme, giving first-time or veteran hikers the variety they want, as well as topographical maps, trail descriptions, and more. Praise for the Day Hike! series: "[Most guidebooks are by] backpackers who occasionally day hike. But most people are day-hikers, who occasionally backpack. And that's the key difference to this series." —Ron C. Judd "The series . . . earns points for rating each individual trip on a five-scale and for providing a comparative overview of all hikes in each book's introductory pages. For those of us who like to cherry-pick trails, ratings simplify our task." — Seattle Times "The presentation of basic facts (distance, elevation gain, maps, permits, etc.) is excellent and easy to follow. In addition to helpful topographical maps, the guides feature elevation profiles—an inspired addition!" — Olympian Washington-state native RON C. JUDD , a veteran columnist and reporter at the Seattle Times , has spent most of his life exploring the trails, campgrounds, streams, and beaches of the Pacific Northwest. The author of a half dozen bestselling guidebooks, two humor books, and a fan's guide to the Winter Olympics, he lives in Bellingham, Washington. WHAT'S NEW IN THE 5th EDITION With the second consecutive update inviting you to the wonders of Rainier in full color, the 5th edition is more user-friendly than ever, with improved layout, graphics, charts, full-color photographs, and wheelchair accessibility information. Continuing to refine an upgrade made to the 4th edition, we’ve provided information for turning a day visit to hike in the park into a multiday getaway, including insider knowledge about campgrounds and lodging in and around Mount Rainier National Park.  Whether your stay at Rainier will be a single day or much longer, you’ll appreciate trail triage tips that include extensive “Best” lists and suggestions that point you toward specific trails for specific conditions, experiences, hiking companions, or allotted time.  Some of the most important changes since the previous edition involve getting into the park itself: As noted in the introduction, Mount Rainier in Spring 2024 announced a new summertime reservation system. Other upgrades are distinctly aimed at accessibility, with new denotations of trails accessible by mobility devices, further enabling adaptive bikers and other adventurous spirits to get into the woods. While there are no fully accessible (ADA-compliant) trails at Mount Rainier National Park, the park has some trails that, to some extent, are doable by wheelchair. Before you head out, be sure to check with staff at the nearest ranger station or visitor’s center to plan for trail slope, grade, width, surface and condition, along with any barriers like downed trees, foot bridges or stairs making the trail inaccessible for wheelchair users. While we’re talking about wheels: We’ve also updated the guide to recognize the growing popularity of mountain, electric and gravel biking. Starting with the 4th edition, we noted that roads closed to vehicular traffic have lengthened, by miles, access to some of the park's classic day-hike trailheads. We left most of those trails in the guide, in anticipation of more and more folks flocking to them as a combined bike/hike experience. This was a good call. Since then, the growth of different types of outdoor cycling has turned this development even more into a silver lining: roads converted to bike-to-hike trails have brought more diverse groups of recreational enthusiasts to the park. Cyclists—mountain, electric and gravel types—can ride these wide, graded hike-bike trails within park boundaries as the prelude (and postscript) to a hike or just a ride itself alongside a creek or up to a scenic vista. Just remember that wheeled riding on Mount Rainier National Park's hiking-only trails is not permitted. Beyond that, some other good news. In this space with the 4th edition, we rejoiced over recovery in the park from devastating flooding in 2003 and 2006, with torrents that took away entire trails and even a popular campground. We’re happy to report that no such devastating weather impacted access to the park in the years leading up to this 5th edition. One exception is notable: High water in 2021 claimed the bridge leading to the magical old-growth forest in the Grove of the Patriarchs Trail, cutting off access to the highlight portion of that class