Enumclaw to Sunrise: the highest drive in the park, and the week you cannot drive it

This was going to be the piece that told you late September is the week to drive from Enumclaw to Sunrise. The huckleberry goes red, the mountain ash goes redder, the elk are loud, the parking lot is half empty and the road closes for the winter a few weeks later. All of that is still true. What has changed is the road.

As of the Park Service's road status page, updated September 8, 2026, the Sunrise Road is "CLOSED to vehicles due to the Grand Park 2 & Wonderland Complex Fires until further notice," and "open for pedestrians & bicyclists ONLY." The White River Road to the campground is open. The Sunrise Visitor Center and Day Lodge are, per the park's hours page, "CLOSED until further notice due to the Grand Park 2 Fire." The September 11 fire update says Grand Park 2 is fully contained and the Wonderland Complex fires "continue to burn in the northern area of the park." Nobody at NPS has said when cars go back up, and this guide will not guess.

So: what Sunrise is, what the drive is when the gate is open, why this is the week, and what you can do in the meantime.

What Sunrise is, and what it is not

At 6,400 feet, Sunrise is "the highest point that can be reached by vehicle" in Mount Rainier National Park, per the park's own page. The meadows are Yakima Park, a summer hunting and gathering ground of the Yakama people for thousands of years before the state finished the highway from Yakima to Enumclaw in 1931 and the Park Service finished the road up from the White River the same year. The 1926 master plan wanted a great lodge to rival Paradise. The Depression got there first. The one wing ever built is the Sunrise Day Lodge, which has never had a bed in it.

Sunrise is not Paradise. Paradise sits at 5,400 feet on the south side, reached from the Nisqually entrance near Ashford, and by the Park Service's own segment times it is about two hours from Enumclaw in summer and a different road entirely in winter. Sunrise is the one on our side.

The drive, in numbers

From Griffin Avenue and SR 410 downtown, the White River turnoff is about 37 miles east: a routing engine run for this article put it at 37.1 miles and 55 minutes, and the SR 410 mileposts put the park gate 32.7 miles from the SR 164 junction with the turnoff a few miles inside. Washington Trails Association says 43. The chains, the Greenwater pump and the winter closure at Cayuse are covered in yesterday's piece on the Crystal Mountain drive, so this one starts where that one turned left.

From the White River Entrance to Sunrise the Park Service gives 13 miles and 45 minutes. It climbs from the campground at 4,400 feet through switchbacks past Sunrise Point, where the columnar andesite in the road cuts is an old lava flow, and the park recommends that RVs and trailers over 25 feet stop at the campground junction. Call the whole trip 50 to 54 miles and an hour and a half from Enumclaw on a clear road. Enumclaw is the last place with a choice about breakfast, a supermarket and a bank of fuel pumps, and past Federation Forest and Greenwater there is nothing until a day lodge that is currently closed. There is no cell service at White River Campground; download the map in town.

The fee, and the reservation you do not need

Entry is $30 per private vehicle for seven days, $25 for a motorcycle and $15 per walker or cyclist, per the NPS fees page, which also says the park does not take cash. An annual park pass is $55; the America the Beautiful annual pass, which the same page lists at $80 for US residents and sells through federal recreation sites and the USGS online store, covers it too; a Washington Discover Pass covers state parks, not this one.

In 2024 and 2025 the Sunrise corridor was the guinea pig for a timed-entry reservation pilot. Not this year. Superintendent Gregory Dudgeon told KOMO in February that no timed entry reservations are needed anywhere in the park in 2026, and the fees page says the same. The park manages crowds with parking instead.

Why late September, in a normal year

The Park Service says the Sunrise Road "usually opens in late June or early July and closes in late September to early October." Its directions page adds the mechanism: from late September the road shuts every night at the White River Campground junction, and the whole road from SR 410 up closes for winter "in mid-October or earlier with the first heavy snowfall." The White River Campground is open "until early October, weather permitting. Exact date TBD."

That is the window. The meadows that flower in mid to late July are, by September, huckleberry and Sitka mountain ash, a six-foot shrub of the thickets above 4,500 feet whose berries turn red before its leaves do. Visit Rainier puts the start of the high huckleberry color in late September and the best of the park's display between Sunrise and Chinook Pass. The bears know the schedule; the park's wildlife page says never to get close to a bear eating berries, and to keep 300 feet from any bear and 50 yards from everything else. The elk are the same animals that winter in the hayfields outside Enumclaw, descended from two cattle cars of Yellowstone stock unloaded in 1912; the park lists elk herds along the Summerland and Crystal Lakes trails off this corridor. The first snow ends it. Some years the color and the snow arrive in the same week.

The walks from the parking lot

For the day the gate opens, or next July. Round-trip figures are the Park Service's.

Emmons Vista Overlooks: half a mile, 70 feet of gain, from the south side of the lot to two overlooks above the Emmons Glacier, the largest by area in the lower 48. This is the one for the passenger who did not sign up for a hike.

Silver Forest Trail: 1.6 miles, 150 feet, about an hour, on past the overlooks through a burn whose weathered snags gave the trail its name.

Sourdough Ridge: WTA calls it 2.5 miles and 400 feet to a high point of 6,800 feet; the park runs it west to Frozen Lake as a 3-mile loop or east to Dege Peak at 4.2 miles. As of September 11 the park lists Sourdough Ridge and Burroughs Mountain as open and everything north of the ridge, including Mount Fremont Lookout, as closed.

Dogs are not allowed on any of them.

What you can do this week

You can drive to the White River entrance, pay the $30, and drive five miles to the campground at 4,400 feet. From there the Sunrise Road is yours on foot or on a bicycle, with the park's warning to watch for fire crews and bring your own water and food. It is 13 miles and 2,000 vertical feet to the top; a bicycle makes it a morning, a strong walker a long day with nothing open at the end. The trails along the White River Road, including Glacier Basin from the campground, reopened September 5.

Or wait for the gate, which is the better plan. The road status and alerts pages are where the change will appear, the park's phone is 360-569-2211, and the Sunrise webcam will show you the snow before anyone types the word. When the page changes, go that week. Bring a card, a full tank, layers for a 6,400-foot morning, and no firewood: a parkwide fire ban has been in place since June 26.

The mountain keeps its own hours. This September, so does the road.