At the end of this week I'll be on a 5-day backpack with my friend Mark and hopefully part of the way with Jenny. To get ready for this backpack I've been dong as much hiking as time permits. None of the hikes have been worth mentioning because they are training hikes that I've done hundreds of times. One of those hikes was in the rain.
Yesterday was sunny and my friend Shannon agreed to go on a long hike to Goat Lake, which is in the Henry M Jackson Wilderness. It's not hard to get there from here so we agreed to meet at the leisurely hour of 10 a.m. We drove and chatted up the Mountain Loop Hwy then got to the trail head, along with about 100 other people, found parking, changed shoes, put on bug spray, got Jodee harnessed and leashed around noon.
We took the Upper Elliot Creek option, which is an old road that is turning into trail but the road bed is still obvious. A little more than three miles later this trail joins the main trail. We happily chatted and hiked until we came to a creek that had obviously been scoured by spring run-off fed by last winter's very heavy snowfall.
The trail kind of disappeared at that point but there was an obvious foot path along hiker's left of the creek. We followed it for a while, picked our way up the slickrock in the creek. At that point I unleased Jodee because it was too sketchy for us to be connected. Shannon and I consulted the map and found that there was a creek crossing then the trail continued along hiker's left of Elliot Creek. The problem with all maps is that they don't always show ALL the creek crossings and we had already crossed a half dozen creeks. We were in the steep section of the trail to the lake so we didn't pay much attention to that final creek crossing before the final ascent to the lake.
We found what we thought was an exit point out of the creek. That part was short but we had to self-belay using vine maple and other handy natural assists. Once we were all safely on the other side we figured it would an easy cross country traverse to the trail. As we traverse we angled up the slope to continue gaining elevation. We traversed and ascended, made our way around blowdown and holes and vine maple patches and so on. Finally we got to a sheer rock face. Our other choice was bush-whacking through vine maple. No thank you.
On the way back down and toward the creek it was clear that other people had tried the same thing. A few anyway. We'd run into boot prints periodically. Finally we hit the trail, and I recognized exactly where we were — just before the big, scoured creekbed. We decided to go back up there to figure out where we went wrong. The young ladies were filtering water and sunning themselves on the bank when we arrived. In front of them were three cairns that pointed across the creekbed. They confessed that they would not have known to cross the creek because the path up to the left of the creek that Shannon and I took was somehow more obvious. However, they had seen hikers come out from across the creek so knew that was the way.
Shannon and I felt a little silly but we did find our way back and knew when to turn around when and how to use the creek as a guide to bring us back to where we had started. Still, feeling a little sheepish we continued up the switchbacks and found the lake. Most of the little day use areas were filled up with other hikers but we found one where we could take a break, wash the sweat and trail dust off.
We left our little spot in the sun at about 1630 and hiked out, which was uneventful and long. The dogs were tired, our feet were tired, and my left shoulder blade was beginning to ache. Still it was a beautiful day, the bugs were only at the parking area, we had a dip in a freezing cold mountain lake, and front row view of a snow-covered mountain that we decided was Foggy Mountain, based on the where it sat in relation to the lake.
Here are a few pictures. Unfortunately I did not take one of Shannon. Bil is Shannon's dog. Jodee is mine. Stats: Total mileage, probably 11 or so given our trek onto the flank of Sloan Peak. Elevation gain, maybe 2500' or a little more.