Goat Mountain and Deadman's Lake — Saturday, Jul. 2, 2005

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

Where to go on a holiday weekend with a mixed forecast? Someplace that would ordinarily not offer much shade. Someplace a little off the beaten track. Goat Mountain is an easy there-and-back overnight. It leads with a nicely graded climb that's rewarded with a ridgeline walk, and there's good camping at Deadman's Lake. The Gifford Pinchot NF seems to be less and less inclined to maintain its roads for passenger cars, so imagine our surprise at finding mile after mile of fresh new pavement and culvert engineering along the newly refurbished 26 Road out of Randle. You could run the Grand Prix on this one. The Goat Mountain Trail is mostly in good shape, despite the fragile pumice soils. It starts through a clearcut, but quickly enters an older forest with nice big trees and lots of moss. Theoretically, this would shelter you from the sun until you break out at the ridgeline, just in time to start drinking in the views. That would be if you were hiking up on a sunny day. With a split forecast, we had the advantage of seeing the blast zone in fog-ridden spookiness on Saturday, and sunny glory on Sunday. Under cloud cover, without any volcanoes to distract us, there was nothing to do but count the wildflowers (lupine, wild strawberry, paintbrush, orange agoseris, mountain arnica, wild rose, tiger lily, phlox, bunchberry). Later in the season, it looked like there'd be an ample huckleberry harvest to waylay even the most ambitious hiker. The next morning dawned with blue skies over Deadman's Lake, and the sun was already halfway up by the time we dragged ourselves out of the tent. A whole new world. In fact, it was a whole new trail: a crew from the Lewis County chapter of the Backcountry Horseman had brushed out the trail climbing up from Deadman's Lake while we were still eating breakfast (or perhaps even sleeping). We dropped our packs at the saddle and made a quick and easy detour to the top of Goat Mountain. More volcanic views: Rainier, St. Helens, Adams, Hood, even Jefferson. The hike back, although mostly downhill, took twice as long for all the times we stopped to stare at the surrounding volcanoes and to watch the steam plume from the new bulge in the Saint Helens crater. How long before she blows again?