Goat Lake — Saturday, May. 28, 2016

Olympic Peninsula

My husband and our two dogs set out to camp at Goat Lake for the Memorial Day holiday weekend in hopes to avoid the crowds of people doing the exact same thing. We started our trek at the Upper Dungeness TH. At about one mile in you come to a junction with the Royal Basin trail. Stay to the left and cross the Dungeness River via a log bridge. After that, continue on for about another mile until you reach a second log bridge to cross the river again... but don't. Just before this bridge, on your right side you can easily see an unmarked trail which will take you to Goat Lake. Once on the way trail, there were a couple of spots of deadfall, but easy enough to navigate around or over. We traveled next to the river for about a mile before coming to a large meadow. Continue to go straight and through the meadow only a bit before the trail veers to your right. These first three miles prior to the meadow is easy and flat, but after that, the torturous 1.8 mile trek of 2900 feet elevation gain begins. The continuous upward slog starts alongside a large slide area with a couple of scrambles up some tree roots. Next, you will traverse for a very short time through a forested area that is quite overgrown and more deadfall to climb over. Once you get through the tree area, the steep incline continues onward through a rock bed and up a dirt/shale trail. We did stop at a small creek that was flowing right next to the trail after the tree area to refill on water. I'm so glad we did as there weren’t any more water spots to filter until the lake. About a quarter of a mile before the lake is where the snow began. Luckily, there was a couple with their two dogs coming down as we were going up and we were able to follow their tracks. Had it not been for that, I don't think we would have been able to find the lake, especially since this was our first time up there. There was one spot that was a bit nerve racking since we had our pups. We had to "climb" up a short, steep snowfield. My husband and I were fine since we brought our ice axes, however, it was a bit difficult for the dogs to get up due to the steepness, but they are tough and made it up. Coming back down this area we went backwards and kept the dogs in front of us so if they slid, they would slide into us, rather than down a steep slope. Once at the lake, it was pretty much snow covered everywhere, except a few spots. Unfortunately, the spots that were uncovered either weren’t flat and/or had no tree coverage. We did manage to find a spot right next to the lake that would suit us for the evening. We ended up not seeing a soul up there and had the place to ourselves. The evening was quiet, clear, windless, and the temperature didn't get as cold as we thought it would. The next morning though, the lake was semi-frozen, and we had some clouds hanging around too. After breakfast and some coffee we did go play on one of the snow slopes above a couple of tarns to practice self-arresting with our ice axes, which was a lot of fun. Due to the weather not clearing up, we decided to head down and stay closer to the Dungeness River rather than tempt fate for another night.