I’ve had Goat Rocks wilderness in my agenda for a long time but knowing that just getting there takes about 4 hours, I knew I needed a long weekend. This past holiday weekend was ideal for that trip. We met early Saturday morning for the long ride to the trail head, once there, I did notice a lot of cars and a lot of people which didn’t give me good vibes on how much solitude we were going to get. Weather was not very nice but descent for a backpacking trip. We started our hike on the Snowgrass trail towards the mountain. This trail started in a very dense forest that started to thin out as we were gaining altitude. We passed numerous streams and meadows on the way full of wildflowers. The original idea was to get to the Bypass trail and take that towards the PCT and find a camping spot along the way, but since there were so many campers, we decided to continue further up. I’m glad we did. Soon after, we reached a plateau and a huge meadow with great views of the mountains ahead and numerous potential campsites. Being so open and windy, it was a bit cold so we left our packs in a potential campsite and went looking for a better one. After a while, Chris found the perfect spot. It was a little valley surrounded by rocks on two sides and trees on the other. That gave us some protection from the wind so we decided to stay there and set up camp. That evening, we got a little glimpse of the sunset and great views of the valley we went thru to get there. Later that night, both Jake and I provided some entertainment to the rest of the group while trying to hang our food. We started throwing a rope tied to a stick that was not working for us, so Jake proposed to use his Nalgene bottle. On the first try, the bottle not only when above the branch we were aiming for but landed on another branch and stayed there. We gave it a strong pull which made the bottle fly back at us and almost hit us. If that wasn’t funny enough, on the second try, we hit the branch but the bottle actually went around twice tying itself to the branch. At that moment Jake and I were thinking that we had lost the bottle and the cord. It occurred to me to throw the other end around to try to untie it and it actually worked. On Sunday, we woke up to a magnificent sunny morning. After a nice breakfast and getting our gear ready for a long day, we started our hike on the Lily Basin trail towards Goat Lake. This hike took us thru so many creeks, valleys and meadows that I even got tired of taking pictures. As you’ll see in the pictures, there were so many flowers that it was almost unbelievable. As we were ascending, the fabulous sunny day started to change rather quickly to an overcast day. Clouds were moving so fast it was almost scary. We got to Goat Lake which is just gorgeous. We did take some pictures there and enjoyed the views for a while before continuing on. By that time it had already started snowing. A bit after the intersection to go to Hawkeye point we decided to turn back. On one side, conditions were getting worse and there were some snowfields up ahead. On our way back, we had continuous snow showers all the way back to camp. Once back, the girls decided to pack up and leave and we boys decided to stay the night and do the full loop the next day. That evening was rough. We stayed mostly under a shelter with continuous snow that turned to hail and sleet. I did wake up in the middle of the night and noticed that it had stopped snowing. When I got out of the tent, I saw the most amazing sky, there were no clouds at all and full of stars. An incredible night. Monday morning was colder that Sunday morning but clear and promising a great day. Before we could head out, we had to hang our gear in the sun to dry and melt all the ice. After packing and having breakfast, we took the same route towards Goat Lake. This time, on a much better day, we saw the north side of Mt Adams behind us and also a lot of wild life. On our way up, we saw numerous Marmots running around and got to a point were two other hikers had spotted a black bear. We stayed there for a while enjoying that view and taking some pictures of it until it turned around, saw us and ran away. We then continued up until we got to Goat Lake. What a difference! The lake was just magnificent. We also saw mountain goats right above the lake. We then continued up on the same trail we used the day before until we got to the intersection with the Goat ridge trail that goes back towards Jordan Creek. This portion of the trail was as beautiful as the other one with incredible views of valleys and meadows reaching as far as the eye could see. On our way down we did hear a couple of bears playing and soon after we did see two cubs running around. Just a couple of seconds after, the mother popped her head up, saw us and started running in the opposite direction with the cubs right behind her. It was an incredible sight that happened so fast we were not able to take pictures. The rest of the hike was arduous and beautiful with different scenery as before. We got more green and more forest that the other side of the ridge but still very pretty. Goat rocks ended up being more than what I expected. Knowing there are a lot of trails in the area, you can be sure I will go back to explore some more.
