Headed up to do Mt. Catherine this morning. The road becomes impassable due to snow about a quarter mile before the trailhead, so that's convenient. You have to know exactly where the trailhead is because the sign is a bit off the main road, and the trail is impossible to see because it is completely snow covered at the start. I used the free Android app OsmAnd+ with offline topographic maps to navigate the trail the whole time. This was required both at the start and throughout the hike because of all the snow. 

The snow was soft, but not too soft. We had snowshoes on our packs but never put them on. Just boots and gaiters were ideal basically the whole time. There are a few angled snowfield crossings that we thought might be hard, but just kicking in little footholds was really easy, making everything pretty passable.

It wasn't actually raining, but as we got higher up, there was a constant snow-melt "rain" from the sun hitting the snow at the tops of the trees. Therefore it was a bit wetter than expected!

It was a really beautiful hike overall, with running water on the trail at the bottom, then the raining snow-melt, then light beautiful snow at the top, with great views from the summit.

There were numerous other vehicles parked on the road, but we were the only ones on the Mt. Catherine trail all the way up and back down.

Overall, an excellent spring hike!

FS 9070 is still partly impassible due to snow cover, starting ~2 miles from the trailhead. I expect the road won't be completely melted out for several more weeks.

Attempted to help dig out an individual whose (4WD) was stuck in a snow patch on the shoulder, to no avail. Luckily, they had (presumably) gotten towed out by the time I returned.

Passed many skiers on the road section, most headed up to Silver Peak. Didn't see a single soul after turning on to Mount Catherine trail. The trail itself is still 90% snow-covered. There weren't great tracks to follow, and proper navigation tools were essential.

Snowshoes/poles (and gaiters) were very nice to have. I also would have preferred an ice axe for the final scramble section, but it was still doable just taking it slow. 

All in all, beautiful day on a pretty mountain. Happy to finally cross this one off my list.

I finally made it up to Mount Catherine yesterday. I've wanted to try for the past month or so, but never arrived early enough. There's been too much fresh snow as well. I figured yesterday might be the last time in the foreseeable future where the freezing levels are still somewhat low.

This trip revealed to me that I have a lot to learn about proper route choices in the snow. My route up was far from ideal. Once I got past the cliff bands the steepness relented a bit and I tried to favor the semi-frozen treewells rather than the deeper powder between the big mountain hemlocks.

It was a fantastic feeling to get on the ridge and see the summit above. I was totally soaked at this point and the sun was setting, so I didn't linger up top. I kept trying to get off of the ridgeline to the north but found it to be much too steep everywhere. So instead of going towards Windy Pass and taking the nordic trails beneath Ollallie back as I had intended, I ran down to NF-9070 and had a long, dark road walk back. I stopped by the Jim Brooks Warming Hut which looked really cozy. Short-cutting the huge switchback on 9070 worked really well. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got on the P2C Trail.

Decided to take advantage of the great weather on Saturday to take a trip up Catherine. There was compact snow and ice on second half of the road to the trailhead, about .25 mile before the trailhead the snow was deeper and deeply rutted. We started hiking at about 9:30am there was snow on the entire trail, except for a couple bare patches, right from the start. I used trekking poles the entire time and crampons about half the time the snow on the trail is quite compact and icey in spots. The views from the top were very good for such  a relatively short hike. We got back to our vehicle around 12:30pm.