Goat Lake Hike

Julie and I did the loop trail to Goat Lake in the southern Cascades as part of her ongoing pursuit of covering all 100 classic hikes in Washington State. At 12 miles the loop was long enough, but we took the wrong trail fork early on and ended up on the Pacific Crest Trail. we didn't become aware of our mistake until after 3 miles where we could see Goat Lake far off in the distance, but with no connecting trail. We had to backtrack which extended the hike to over 18 miles. We finally reached Goat Lake which was mostly covered in snow even after hotter than normal summer.

The hike had perhaps the greatest concentration of wild flowers I've seen on any of my hikes. This made for a very beautiful hike which was fortunate as the surrounding mountains we at best obscured by smoke from British Columbia forest fires. Normally the peaks of Rainier, Adams and St. Helens would be seen from the trail, but none were viable on this day.