Pretty day for a snow hike up to Kautz Creek. I proceeded past the creek and hiked up through the forest for about a mile then turned around. No microspikes or snowshoes were needed.

What a great day for a snowshoe. Sorry, I wrote a great trip report, then added photos and it blitzed my very nice report. Too tired to do it again. Snowshoed 2+ easy, flat miles RT to the river crossing and back in nice fresh powder. Lightly snowing whole way. Was a great way to ring in the New Year.

We headed up to Mt. Rainier for a couple of hours and did three separate out-and-back snowshoes from the Paradise road. The road to Paradise was due to open at about noon and the Longmire parking lot was packed, so we elected to stay in less crowded areas of the park and had a great time. There is currently a really nice snow pack down on the trail, and just steps off the trail there is a nice powder base for some off-trail fun. Just stay near the trail so you don't get lost. The road is very slick and snow-covered. Bring your snow chains and/or 4WD and take it easy. Law enforcement is present and penalizing speeding (not us). We did the Kautz Creek trail from the parking lot up to the creek and back for about 2 miles. There is a good view of Rainier from the viewpoint by the parking lot. After driving up to Longmire and turning around, we stopped at the Twin Firs loop. We never did complete the entire loop as it is really covered up and navigating it was difficult, but we did have a good time. Finally, we stopped off at the Westside Road and snowshoed up the road for a while (closed at the gate). The trail is not groomed but there's plenty of room for everyone and some cross-country skiers have a nice ski track going. The Kautz Creek and Westside Road snowshoes would be good snowshoe routes for a first timer.

We started out from the Kautz Creek trailhead at about 9am. Within just a few minutes on the trail, we encountered the first blowdown-- but the trail was still easy to navigate as far as the creek crossing (about 1mile in). Beyond that, however, there is such a severe jumble of huge downed trees and tangled limbs that it is extremely difficult to find and follow the trail at all. We were using a GPS unit which has the Kautz Creek Trail marked on a topo map, but the route shown on the map and our actual position were not quite matching. Even when we knew we were standing right on the trail, the GPS showed it to be somewhere off to the East of us, etc. We wound up having a fun (and exhausting!) mostly off-trail adventure anyway. Weather-wise, we lucked out: snow showers to start with followed by partial blue sky and filtered sunshine under the canopy, and calm winds. Temperature was cool but not frigid, and there was about 1-2 feet of snow on the ground, increasing as we gained elevation. GPS said that we gained about 1800 ft before we turned around and began picking our way over/under/around/through the tangled mess of backcountry on our return trip. Fun day, but I'm glad we weren't out any longer than we were as it was nearly dark by the time we reached the parking lot.

It's annoying that for an overnight you need to wait until 9am to stand in line and get your backcountry permit... so by the time we were on the trail it was 10am. :/ Snow covers the trail from the start, it's boot-able until about 1/2 mile past Kautz Creek. There are some trees to climb around but a well packed trail makes this easy. The creek crossing's 3 bridges were snow covered and a bit slippery. There was a very difficult 3 tree conglomeration down just across the creek... we tried to crawl under it but our overnight packs got caught so it was super annoying. We ended up getting out our saw on the way out and sawing through the 2 lowest trees so it's easy to pass now. You're welcome ;) 1/2 mile past the creek the trail became softer snow and required snow shoes. At this point it was obvious no one had been beyond here... even though the last heavy snow was a full week+ ago. We + random guy also headed to Indian Henry's Hunting Ground took turns nagivating and breaking trail. It was exhausting work to get through all that the snow. The steep uphill sections were particularly soul sucking because the snow was powder-- refusing to make decent steps. Lots of "tree bombs" of snow falling all around and occasional branches were falling as well. By the time we crossed the bridge to follow the stream gully up towards the steep switchbacks that lead up the shoulder of Mt Arrarat it was almost 3pm and we were tired (I carried 40 lbs not counting snowshoes and he had closer to 50). Our trail buddy said he was going to try and make it up about 500 gain from our current location to set up camp. The 3 of us discussed how we believed in better snow conditions/established trail reaching the Hunting Ground seemed reasonable in a day but that in current conditions it seemed that two difficult days was more likely. We also wished getting a 7am start was an option without having to get the permit before the park closed the previous day. We opted to avoid trying to gain ~1,000 feet in the growing darkness to a campsite of uncertain flatness in the slippery powder that refused to make decent steps in favor of a relatively safe and flat campsite and chose to seek out a flat area as far from falling branch danger as possible.We stomped out an area of snow near the flat area at the stream that was as far from trees as possible (10-20 feet) and set up camp as the wind started to really howl. Our hilleberg tent always handles iclement weather like a champ. The wind blew hard chunks of ice and snow onto the tent regularly, which was noisy and woke us up but proved no problem for us. Our portable weather station recorded low 20f temps around 7pm before we went to sleep. We stayed warm and cozy in our tent and with the humidity relatively low (60%), the vents open and the wind howling there was little condensation in the tent. We tried out a new cold weather system after having been extremely cold on past winter camp adventures (admittedly it was 5f that particular time)-- this time we set up with our 2 person 15f big agnes sleeping bag with our 30f nemo double sleeping bag topper on top and the downmat 7's below us. We were so warm that I had to keep venting the sleeping bag because I was sweaty. Still, I prefer overly warm to cold so I consider it a win! The next morning the wind was howling like crazy! I heard branches falling all around in the forest while we ate a hot breakfast. We slowly ate and packed, hoping the wind would die down. We headed up the hill on our trail buddy's path, puzzling over how there were snowshoe prints up and bootprints down. No one else had been anywhere near so they had to be his... We figured he had given up either late last night or earlier in the morning and hiked out. We made it up about 500 feet and it was EXTREMELY HARD GOING. A step forward and 1/2 slipped back. Impossible to make steps. It was noon now. We discussed our options-- we could fight up another couple hundred feet and reassess the safety of the traverses between us and Indian Henry's.... and also the reality of making it back on-time on Saturday...consider camping on the ridgeline once we fought our way up there... or turn around and hike out today. We opted to hike out, knowing that this adventure will be much easier once there is a reasonable path. FYI: once you reach the flat area at the stream head you'll see footprints heading downhill (left)-- these go to our campsite, also straight ahead a short distance where we were searching for the "trail" route to see if it was easier (it wasn't really) and right (uphill) which is the path we were taking and failed on. The way out went by relatively easily and we were back to the car around 3:30pm, even given the time we spent breaking a new trail that wasn't quite as steep and that we think followed the trail switchbacks and blazing a new trail down towards the real trail. Another tree had fallen across the real trail but this was easy to bypass by going slightly uphill. Then we cut down the trees blocking the trail so we didn't have to get stuck trying to climb under it again. It was a little shocking to see how many people were at the Kautz trailhead. Seriously, why are they wearing yoga pants and jeans to go play in the snow? Sigh. Two tries so far... so perhaps our 3rd attempt to visit the Hunting Ground in the snow will be successful?