Finally decided to do the Iron Goat Trail after putting it off for a long time. Glad we did, nice trail and great history. We went from the FS road trailhead (not interpretive site lot) to Wellington and back and my tracker showed 12.4 miles roundtrip with some random spurs and off-shoots. Took the upper grade planning to do a loop down to the lower grade on the way back, but we missed the fork so it ended up as an out and back. We plan on going back to do the lower grade sometime.
Road is in decent shape, just avoid the potholes and go slow if you have a low car. Lots of flowers right now and the salmon berries are about to ripen. Didn't see any signs of bears that day. As others have said, the upper grade gets a little overgrown at some points and there is quite a bit of stinging nettle. So be able to identify it and deal with it if you're sensitive to the stings, luckily for me it's only a minor annoyance. Contrary to the hike warnings, the toilet at Wellington trailhead was open.
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