WOW!...is all I can say about Goat Rocks, it is a stunning place, but you have to be prepared to ride long days and have a surefooted trusty steed, to see the real beauty.
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| Goat Rocks from afar. |
Having camped close by this area before, I knew it would be a long drive over gravel forest service roads. I stopped at Keenes Horse Camp to do a ride I had done two years before, but wasn't able to get very far, due to snow. The Muddy Meadows Trail climbs up towards Mt. Adams and then meets the Highline Trail. I had no trouble this time with snow, but it started getting cloudy and a little chilly and I realized there was no point in riding any higher, so I met up with the PCT and looped back down. It was raining as I got back to the truck.
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| Mt. Adams from the Muddy Meadows trail. |
I then drove onward to Walupt Lake Horse Camp. This is in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and the closest town is Randle, WA. There are nine sites, several of which are doubles with plenty of room for parking. There are two bathrooms, garbage, manure bins, and a hand pump for water, but although the websites all said the water is potable, it is NOT. However there is some potable water 3/4 of a mile away, at the lake where the road ends. Like most WA camps, there is high lining, with no corrals, and it was $16.00 per night.
There is a mapboard of the trail system, as well as some paper maps you can take of the trails for both Keenes and Cody, which are camps nearby, but not for Walupt....oddly. I had several hiking books about the area so I used them to plan my routes.
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| A double site at Walupt Horse Camp. |
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| Walupt Horse Camp. |
It rained all night and in the morning it was still misting and cloudy, but I tacked up and rode the Coleman Weedpatch Trail which climbs up quite high and then meets the PCT. I did a loop returning on the Walupt Lake Trail. I am certain there were probably some good views along the way, but I wasn't seeing much that day with all the cloud cover and fog.
In the middle of the night the wind picked up, and so did the temps. By morning it was blue sky and sun which made me pretty ecstatic. I had a plan, and it involved doing a loop along Goat Ridge to Goat Lake, then a side trip to Snowgrass Flats and then down the Snowgrass Trail. You can ride there from the horse camp, but it's just a lot of extra needless miles and time, so I drove over to the Berry Patch Trailhead, getting there just in the nick of time to snag a parking spot. Even on a Thursday it was pretty busy, with three other horse trailers and lots of cars, half of those being bow hunters. Tis the season. Apparently on the weekends there can be as many as 100 people on this trail.
Most horse people just go straight to Snowgrass Flats and back, but the Goat Ridge Trail is much more beautiful, although not for the faint of heart especially when you reach the Lily Basin Trail, which has some sketchy sections.
There is also a side trail that takes you to an old lookout site, and then meets up with the main trail again, which is worth it for the view of Rainier.
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| Mt. Rainier. |
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| The Goat Ridge Trail. |
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| The Goat Ridge Trail. |
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| The Goat Ridge Trail, with Mt. St. Helens in the background. |
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| The Goat Ridge Trail. |
My horse is surefooted, luckily, but she appears to have zero fear of heights, as I was leading her over certain "not so great" sections she thought it was a grand idea to walk on the very edge of a precipice with a sheer drop off inches away, or up the side of the cliff instead of down the middle of the trail, giving me some heart palpitations, and making me wonder about her sanity. There were plenty of hikers out and about, but I only saw one other person who was riding, and he was on a mule.
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| The Goat Ridge Trail. |
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| Views of Mt. Adams where the Goat Ridge Trail meets the Lily Basin Trail. |
Arriving at Goat Lake, I decided that would be a good lunch spot. And the place lived up to it's name, with actual mountain goats way up on the ridge above me.
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| Goat Lake. |
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| Goats at Goat Lake! |
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| Goat Lake from afar. |
I would have liked to have stayed up there all day, but I dragged myself away, and got to the intersection where you can ride up to Snowgrass Flats and to the PCT. My original plan had been to summit the mountain just above, called Old Snowy, but I ran out of time. Looping back down, I rounded a corner and encountered a llama. A couple of hikers were standing still watching him/her. They looked relieved when they saw me, and asked if it was my llama, I said no, effectively dashing their hopes. There wasn't much we could do as far as catching him/her, since he/she was not wearing a halter and looked uninterested in human companionship. I assumed it was a pack llama that had escaped from someone camping in the area. I hope someone eventually got reunited with their animal.
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| Rina napping above Snowgrass Flats. |
Heading back down to the trailhead I was thrilled to have seen such a beautiful place, thinking that was to be the best scenery of the trip. Luckily for me, it was going to get even better.
On Friday my pony got the day off, and so I hiked over to Walupt Lake. As I lay sunning myself on the beach several people wandered by wearing sweaters and pants. One couple told me I was a hardy person. I guess it wasn't all that hot out, the breeze was a bit stiff, but I hopped in the lake anyway (desperation from camping a long time with no shower) and then called it a day.
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| Walupt Lake. |
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| Walupt Lake, hoof prints to lead the way. |
The next day I rode the Nannie Ridge Trail, which also eventually meets the PCT (as all the uphill trails do there). I rode north on the PCT and to my surprise found some even more stunning scenery. A hiker and I arrived at Gilbert Peak at the exact same time, and we both just stood there gaping at it. Even jaded PCT thru hikers rave about this section.
I continued on to Cispus Pass, and the beauty continued. A couple of section hikers and I had a nice chat at the top, before I had to reluctantly turn around and go back.
There were such a lot of nice people hiking and camping, I was never really alone for long, maybe 20 minutes max. before running into someone else. Everyone was so delirious from the views, that we all just grinned stupidly at one another.
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| Gilbert Peak on the Yakama Indian Reservation. |
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| Gilbert Peak on the Yakama Indian Reservation. |
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| On the PCT, Cispus Pass. |
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| On the PCT, Cispus Pass |
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| On the PCT, Cispus Pass |
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| On the PCT, Cispus Pass, the washed out area of the trail. |
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| On the PCT, heading south back to camp. |
On my last day I got ready early, drove back over past Keenes Horse Camp and did the Killen Creek Trail, another one I had tried to do on a previous trip, but couldn't get past the snowdrifts. This is a short trail with great views of Mt. Adams, and you can continue briefly up the High Camp Trail along the slopes of the mountain, until it eventually becomes impassable to horses.
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| On the High Camp trail. Time to turn around. |
What a great trip, I am so blessed to be able to do what I love.
GPS COORDINATES TO KEENES HORSE CAMP
GPS COORDINATES TO WALUPT HORSE CAMP
