Trail of the Shadows — Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025

This was our last hike of the year so I wanted to make it something extra special for the kids. I wanted to take them on a snow hike so we decided to head to Longmire at Mt. Rainier. Since I knew they would be very distracted by the snow I wanted to pick something super short and easy (but still try to hit our minimum 1 mile goal) so that we could take the pressure off hiking and enjoy the snow!

Obviously the road conditions are different day to day, this was our experience on Sunday Dec 28: We started seeing snow on the ground in Ashford. The road was wet. There was a line to enter the park when we arrived at 1pm but it went quickly. We were asked at the booth if we had chains, which we did (it is required to carry them to enter the park this time of year). The road up to Longmire was about 80% bare and wet, with some dusting of snow on some of the roads. We saw people chaining up while the road was still bare.. I am not sure that is the correct practice. We saw lots of folks with chains on, in fact, on bare wet road. The parking lot at Longmire was wet/dusted with snow and slippery to walk on but we were not slippery driving in my Forester. As we were leaving we saw a big pickup truck that had slid off the road and was very lucky a tree caught them from going down the side of the mountain. Tow trucks were on route to help.

Longmire had at least 8+ inches of snow I would guess. The bathrooms are open and very clean. The trail itself is very very packed snow, as it gets a lot of heavy use. I put "trail snow covered at times" in the conditions, but the entire trail was covered in snow. There were people on this trail with all types of attire - we did fine with boots with good traction but it was still slick & slippery in some areas due to the snow being so compact on the trail - microspikes would have made the trail completely slip-free but is definitely not required and we got by fine without them.

We checked out two small springs on the trail - they were definitely not "hot" but they were definitely a lot less cold than the ambient temperature, and smelled of sulfur!

At the end of the trail we stopped and made a small snowman, but the snow was so powdery it was hard to pack it together well. We finished our hike with a little celebration at the car - this wrapped up the 52 Hike Challenge for our family! We heated up some hot cocoa, had some sweet treats, and I presented the kiddos with their 2025 52 Hike Challenge Finisher Medals!

This wraps up our 52 Hike Challenge! We hope to continue to do more hikes and backpacking trips in the future (just not every week where it feels like homework...!) Here are our final stats:

Me: 67
David(5): 57
Holly(3): 52

More Information on this Trip Report

• https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/21378613092