Snowgrass Flat, Goat Ridge & Heart Lake via Lily Basin Trail — Friday, Jul. 4, 2025

I did the loop on the Goat Ridge trail to Lily Basin to Snowgrass flats, with some small detours. The road in is washboarded in parts and has some small-ish potholes, but any car can do it.

The Goat Ridge trail up to the Lily Basin trail is essentially snow free, except for two small patches that are easy to cross on the north side of the Goat Ridge lookout. Lily Basin is also essentially snow free from that junction to Hawkeye point, but there's a literal 6 foot wall of snow on the ridge after that. It's easy to get to the first "peak" of Hawkeye point, but to get to the second part you'll need to cross a decent amount of snow with exposure.

My plan was to camp at Heart Lake, so I found a way up the wall of snow, but the other side was even worse. Essentially all of the Lily Basin trail was snow covered, but it looked snow free near the lake itself. If you're trying to do this, prepare to spend at least a mile sidehilling across snow fields and bring better snow equipment than the one trekking pole I had.

Since Heart Lake was out, I went to Goat Lake. There were lots of options for camping at the top of Jordan Basin, but they all looked very exposed to the wind. A lot of the trail from Goat Ridge to Goat Lake was snow covered, but there was a well worn path across them and they all felt solid. Goat Lake itself is completely snow covered, with 4 campsites snow free. A few of the sites could have multiple tents, and it looked like a few more sites would be snow free soon.

From Goat Lake to Snowgrass flats there was less snow but the bridges were much sketchier. A few of them are probably melted out already, the rest should be viewed with extreme skepticism. It looked like there were plenty of camp sites along here.

There's nothing much to report about the trails at lower elevation and in the trees. There were bugs, but not too bad, and a few trees down but also not too bad. The trails were otherwise in good condition.