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Day 10 (Tue, 8/05).  Maple Creek to Paradise River (3725 ft elev).   Backpacked  7.60 miles with 2535 ft gain/ 1557 ft loss.

a. Optional Side Trip (En Route):  Bench Lake / Snow Lake Day Hike.   3.16 miles with  650 ft gain/loss.

It was a most cloudy day for the entire trip.    People's plan was to get to the Narada Falls, drop the packs, and go to the Paradise MRNP visitor center for ice creams.   Nobody was going to Snow Lake side trip.  My plan was to hike more trails as I felt quite strong.   Again, I had a big breakfast (Egg Skillet).  I felt really great that my digestive system was working great converting potential energy (food) to kinetic energy (walking) very well.   Everybody was gone around 0640.   I left close to 0700. 

The trail going up from Maple Creek was quite nice along the Stevens Creek.   It's on the shadow and had like 2 beautiful waterfalls.    I took 5 min break on each waterfalls.   Then, the trail came close to the Hwy.    I hid my pack in the woods and walked on the road for about 1/4 miles to Bench / Snow Lake Trailhead.   There were 3 cars at the TH.   Snow Lake was just over 1 mile from its trailhead.  Its trail was fully loaded with Bear Grass but all withered.    I stopped at the Bench Lake for photo, and continued on to Snow Lake.     Some people were camping at Snow Lake.     It was difficult to take a picture of the Snow Lake.   The best place was near the camp site where both the Unicorn Peak and the partial Snow Lake could be seen.

The trail hugged along the xxxx highway.    I also visited Louise Lake (like 100 ft off the trail), and headed on to the Reflection Lake.   I heard of the Reflection Lake many times.   Here it was right by the HWY xxxx.    There were little wind, so the reflection of the Mt Rainier was not great.  (The best reflection of the Mt Rainier was at Mirror Lake near Indian Henry Hunting Ground.)    When I reached the Narada Falls, I decided to take a break there, instead of joining my group at Paradise.     I sat down and chilled out for a while.   Then,  I decided to go up on the view point (about 100 ft).   There was the Narada falls parking lot with a few picnic tables.     I saw a bunch of Korean people finishing up the picnic as it's close to 1300.   They were from a Vocal Studio in Federal way.   I said "Hello" in Korean.    They were asking me what I was doing.    When I told them that I was backpacking around the mountain and in 10th day,  they told me to eat whatever on the table !    They were packing the food away.  I thanked them and feasted for about 15 minutes, and brought some food back to our camp site (Paradise River).   After eating,  I helped them clean it up and loaded the picnic gears in their car.   I also told them to look at the Narada Falls by going down to the view point below.    There,  I helped them taking the group photo.   One of them shouted that I did my part for them for taking their group pictures.    I took another 1/2 hour break below the Falls dipping my hot feet in a tiny creek.   It felt great.

 Interestingly,   when I came down to the Paradise Camp Site (around 1530),  I was already hungry.   It's been only like 2 hours that I feasted at Narada Falls.    I had another dinner (but small) before going to sleep.  Also, went to the River and cleaned myself.   

My group returned a couple of hours later.    When I offered the food,  they quickly devoured the meats (albeit just came back from Paradise).   The rock walls near the Toilet looked interesting.  

The Paradise Camp site was great with almost no bugs, big group site, etc.    Overnight around 0130,   I could feel some rain drops as Kim was placing her rain covers.   I quickly put the rain covers on and secured all my gears under the blue tarp.    It turned out that rain did not come down.    The valley was quite warm and the rain drops could be some condensations in the air.

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