Intermediate Snowshoe - Mazama Ridge (Mount Rainier)

I almost cancelled. Forecasts ranged from absolutely awful to just kinda awful. Wind gusts up to 38 mph, depending on what site you looked at.  In the end we changed location to dead horse creek which one person had gone to on a snow camping class.  We snowshoed for a short distance in amazing fluffy snow, set up camp and did a hike up to alta vista. We had a great group of enthusiastic and flexible campers, blue skies for part of the first day, amazing views of the tatoosh and the mountain.  Clouds  and weather rolled in but given our protected location, everyone was pretty comfy. 

We did wander quite a bit from the overnight lot, and in the end, were less than a mile from Paradise, but that was part of the contingency plan. If things got too bad, we could get to a protected location. 

It was a festive time, with holiday lights and a santa hat on one of our group, a lovely kitchen (thanks mostly to a lot of stomping and shoveling by a few enthusiastic folks), and hot water babies to take into the tent.