Kautz Creek TH has a median size parking lot, 3 miles before Longmire.
Elevation ~2400'. Still chilly a little after 8am.
Not much snow left on the group.
We were the first car.
2 vault toilets, very clean, full of TP.
~8:30am, we started hiking.
The trail starts on the opposite side of the road.
The trail branches off the boardwalk a minute into the TH.
It is flat in a young forest.
A mile later it crosses Kautz Creek, which doesn't have much water.
There are 3 small single log bridges, one has a hand rail.
You can see Rainier from here.
For the next ~2300' and 2.5 miles, we were in the trees without any view.
There's a boot track to follow.
Switched to snowshoes pretty early on. I tried to cut one zigzag, but it wasn't worth the trouble. Sinking too much, even on snowshoes.
At the first openning, finally have some views. ~11am.
Still had track to follow.
After some small zigzags, we dropped down to another flat area with some tracks going to 2 different directions.
We took the right one, it follows the summer trail to about 5600'.
The cuts left zigzag up a steep-ish slope for 200'.\
Adams and St Helens loom to the south.
The last bit is quite flat all the way to the summit.
There is metal post underneeth the summit, now in the snow hole. Someone obviously dug it out, otherwise, I woudn't have seen it.
I brought a Rainier beer for the occasion.
Trees block half of Rainier, so have to step to the side for better view.
To the south, it's completely open, can also see Hood, faintly.
For better view of Rainier, need to go back to the flat area.
It looks so close, almost can touch.
On the way down, we took a more direct route. The snow is soft, so we just cut down, fairly easy on steep-ish slope. Soon connected to our original track at the bottom of the flat area. The rest is retracing our track, fairly boring. Found a couple talking staning by the trail, about 1-2 miles from TH, then again 2 people at the Kautz Creek crossing. Near the TH, we saw a few more people.
Got back to the car and changed ~3:30pm. Ealier than I planned.
So we walked the short "nature trail", reading the displays.
Learned that Kautz Creek was mostly diverted due to flood, and disappeared into the woods.
Some traffic coming back to town, because we were too early. Quite cloudy by now, and warm. Should have started the hike an hour later, but at least at 6am this morning, we didn't have any traffic.
Total, maybe 10 miles, 3700'.
