This weekend Jeff and I hiked a section of the Wonderland Trail at Mount Rainier. The Wonderland Trail winds a 93-mile circle around Mount Rainier, and some day (maybe soon) I hope to do the whole thing. (But not yet!)
This time we planned to start from Longmire and hike northwest along the trail with Mirror Lakes as our eventual goal. We were to spend the first night at Pyramid Creek, then hike up to Mirror Lakes the second day and come back down to spend the night at Devils Dream. On the third day we would hike back out. We thought it was a pretty good, conservative plan. It’s only about 3.5 miles from Longmire to Pyramid Creek and 2.2 from there to Devils Dream. Mirror Lakes are another couple of miles beyond Devils Dream (but they’re relatively level miles—relatively).
That was the theory, anyway. As we all know, practice is always its own creature.
You can find our proposed route on the Mount Rainier National Park Trails Map (look toward the lower left-hand corner). Also see another hiker’s description of traveling essentially the same section of trail. Finally, the Seattle Times has a nice set of pages about the Wonderland Trail.