Vanson Peak, Goat Mountain and Deadman's Lake & Vanson Ridge — Saturday, Jul. 1, 2000

South Cascades > White Pass/Cowlitz River Valley

The kids and I decided it was time to head up to Vanson Peak area on Sunday to check snow levels and just to get out for the day. The trail is located southwest of Riffe Lake off of Hiway 12 in Lewis County. Right away it enters the Mount St. Helens National Monument. My brother and I were camped at Deadmans Lake, located another 3 miles farther towards St. Helens, on May 18th 1980. Does that ring a bell to anyone. Now it has been twenty years since we've been back up there and so at the end of July we're going to retrace our days and steps leading up to that spectacular event. We wanted to go up on the aniversary but the snow level prohibited that from happening, so we decided to wait until it was clear to go. I will follow up with a report after the trip to let you know how things went. As far as Sunday's trip, it was nice to go up with my boys and show them where I took their mother on our first backpacking trip some 24 years ago. At that time if somebody would have told me that 24 years later I'd be taking our 15 and 16 year old kids up to the same peak I would have told them they were nuts. It was a wonderful experience.