One benefit of working weekends, my hiking takes place mid-week, and so less crowds. But this trail is rarely crowded anyways. One of my perennial favorites, did it almost exactly a year ago.
We parked near the the falls of an unnamed creek. Rock slides from many years ago have made it so you end up parking/starting your hike a couple hundred yards before the maps say the trailhead is. The road up can be handled by most vehicles with normal clearance, there are only a few deep potholes that can easily be avoided, as long as you don't mind mud and maybe a few branches rubbing along your car. Keep in mind this can often change... a downed tree along the way can put up unexpected barriers. Not sure how much the forest service checks out the area, but there are enough recreational users and such that such barriers don't seem to stay up long before someone takes a chain saw to them.
There was a bit of recent snow, not enough for snowshoes, but we opted to start out the hike with our microspikes on. We had some issues with snowballing, but there were just enough slippery spots that having them on was worth it, but they weren't absolutely necessary.
Typically, we have gone past Cathedral Falls and at the split (about 1-1/3 mile in?) and headed off to the right towards Deadman's Lake, because the water's usually too fast to be crossing for the Tumwater/Goat Mountain trail. Today we were able to find a safe way across, so charted some new territory for us.
After crossing, up a short hill, there's another split, and while it looks like the trail could continue along Goat Creek, it doesn't. If there was a trail there, it has overgrown and washed out enough that even just the 50 feet or so I went out was more of a risk than I probably should have taken. So back-tracking to the split, we continued on the uphill route.
At about 2-1/3 miles in from the start we came across some downed trees... nothing large, but since we didn't have a saw or anything, had to do a bit of crawling in and out of the branches to continue.
Then, bout 1/4 mile later we came to main crossing of Goat Creek... the water was too deep to wade and there was no rocks or logs to try and cross with, so we explored the area a little before turning back. I definitely want to return in summer where either the water will be lower, or it will be warm enough that I won't mind getting my feet wet and further exploring up this trail. So all in all, we got in just over 5 miles.
Skies were only partly cloudy most of the day, we got a bit of a late start so the sun was working it's way down as we turned around. Made for some nicely lit photos along the way, and an opportunity to play some more with my lensball.
This is just a nice hike with gently rolling terrain, the beauty of many waterfalls (large and small), and a variety of "challenges" as well as scenery, and you can tailor the distance to what fits your skill level, or as in our case today, our time frame.
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