Iron Goat Trail — Friday, Feb. 29, 2008

Central Cascades > Stevens Pass - West

On the 98th anniversary of the Wellington avalanche disaster, the Cascade Curmudgeon and I hiked most of the Iron Goat Trail, skipping only the stretch from Windy Point to Wellington. We parked across the street from the Scenic TH in the plowed-out area by the Scenic area cabins, went up to the upper grade along the general route of the switchback that the CC helped construct last summer, went along the upper grade to the Martin Creek TH, and then back along the lower grade to Scenic. We needed snowshoes the whole time, and actually needed our ice axes in a number of places going from Scenic to the upper grade. There are lots of downed and broken trees and numerous slide areas. The snow was so deep that the tops of the mileposts came only to my waist. The big news is the climax avalanche that covered about a 250-foot swath of the lower grade near stream 3 that probably came down during the same several days avalanches closed Highway 2. It is about 30-40 feet high, full of timber and debris, and exactly over the area where the IGT volunteers had worked long and hard constructing a bridge. Who knows what condition the bridge is in now, and we probably won't know until June or July. It will take a long time to melt out. We scrambled over the avalanche, and on the other side could see tracks of others who had hiked in from Scenic and turned back. It snowed most of the day. We took our time, so we averaged a mile an hour to hike 6.5 miles.