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Kautz Creek

Field	Value
name	Kautz Creek
image	Kautz Creek.jpg
image_caption	Kautz Creek in Mount Rainier National Park, photographed in 2006.
subdivision_type1	Country
subdivision_name1	United States
subdivision_type2	State
subdivision_name2	Washington
subdivision_type3	National parks
subdivision_name3	Mount Rainier National Park
length_mi	6
source1_location	Kautz Glacier, Mount Rainier
mouth	Nisqually River
tributaries_right	Pyramid Creek, Pearl Creek

Kautz Creek is a tributary of the Nisqually River, flowing from the Kautz Glacier, with its watershed in the Mount Rainier National Park of Washington. It drains southwest from Mount Rainier for about 6 mi before it joins the Nisqually River near Mount Rainier Highway. It is notable for being a severe flooding hazard due to the volume of summer glacier melt and its frequently changing course. The 400 ft Kautz Creek Falls on the headwaters of the creek was formed by the retreat of the Kautz Glacier in the past 50 years.

Kautz Creek was named after A. V. Kautz, an army officer and mountain climber.

Hydrology

The channel of Kautz Creek is very steep and narrow, because it has eroded through the relatively soft material that the lahars and mudflows have deposited. The creek flows in a trench that is 100 to wide and up to 75 ft deep, and its course often changes during floods.

Lahars

The creek is notorious for its history of severe floods and mudflows. On October 2 and 3, 1947, heavy rains triggered a jökulhaup (glacial lake outburst flood) from the Kautz Glacier- the largest flood after the establishment of the park. The flood (similar to a volcanic lahar) moved 40000000 m3 of earth and boulders of up to 13 ft in diameter for 6 mi. It buried the Nisqually-Longmire Road under 30 ft of debris, and carved a canyon 300 ft deep. Other large debris flows have occurred in the Kautz Creek watershed in 1961, 1985, and 1986, with small debris flows occurring more frequently. The creek also jumped its banks in November 2006, destroying parts of the Kautz Creek Trail.

References

"Kautz Creek Falls at Waterfalls Northwest".
Meany, Edmond S.. (1923). "Origin of Washington geographic names". University of Washington Press.
"USGS Study of Postglacial Lahars from Mount Rainier".

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

rivers-of-washington-(state) rivers-of-pierce-county,-washington

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