Goat Mountain — Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024

When we started just before 8am there were two other cars in the lot. The road in has some large potholes which I was able to negotiate in a sedan, but it was a bit bumpy. There are multiple runoff streams running through the forest right now and as mentioned in previous reports the last water is found around 5900ft. It threatened to rain all day and it did briefly on several occasions, just enough to make us put on our rain jackets for a few minutes each time. We went to the end of the trail/bootpath which ends at what I heard referred to as the "dog walkers summit" or the hikers summit which is just below the west summit of Goat Mt. From there we dropped down towards the permanent snowfield on scree and traversed around to the base of the west summit scramble. This initial drop down towards the permanent snowfield was very loose. I used a trekking pole and ice axe for stability, there is no snow travel necessary under current conditions. The final section up to the top of the west summit was an easy, enjoyable scramble. We were in the clouds most of the day and got no views from the summit, really the only negative for the day. On the way down we took our time gorging ourselves on huckleberries. Altogether including relaxing on the summit for awhile and an extended period of time spent picking berries on the way down it took us just over 8 hours and we clocked 10.2 miles round trip.