Back to Where It All Began - Goat Mountain, 6.25.2020

I met my amazing wife in the fall of 1991 and by springtime we were not only engaged but really excited to camp and hike together. Our very first mountain hike was Goat Mountain in the Mt. Baker Wilderness and we had an incredible day there. So now roll the tape forward to 28 years later and I decided it was time to get back there which is what I did today. I was the second car at the trailhead. I ran into the lady and her two dogs that owned the first car fairly early in the hike as she was already coming back down. This pleased me greatly knowing there was no one else in front of me from here on out.

The trail was really nice, very smooth with hardly any roots or rocks. There were lots of cold little creeks to cross so with a filter you don’t need to carry much water. It did gain altitude pretty rapidly at first and after about 2.5 miles and a couple of thousand feet of vertical gain I began to break out of the trees. This was also where the snow patches started and it didn’t take long before I was climbing on solid snow cover. It was a little hard to stay on track but I had the first lady and her dog’s prints to follow and I had been before so I knew I just had to go up and stay a bit to the south.

**Typical travel climbing out of the trees**

Soon I broke out into much bigger views.

**First view of the west horn of Goat Mountain (the less horny of the horns).**

The area surrounding the Nooksack River is one of my favorite areas of the Cascades and the views did not disappoint!

I was directly across the valley from the Mt. Baker Ski Area and I could see the lifts and the lower lodge. For all you out of state skiers, skiing at Baker is amazing with Mt. Shuksan’s huge glaciers right in your face. It is really a beautiful ski area.

I reached the site of a former fire lookout that is totally gone now but I climbed a couple of hundred feet higher to the top of a knoll with a commanding view of not only Goat Mountain but an incredible scene stretching from Hannegan Peak to Mt. Baker. The weather was perfect and I was absolutely alone up there. No one even came up during my stay above the trees and I only saw a few people total and they were all coming up as I was going down into the tree section again.

**From the knoll I could see both horns of Goat Mountain. I’d sure like to climb it someday but it’s a long, long day with a lot of vertical so that will probably never happen. Well, maybe.**

**Spring was in full form at this elevation**

**Pano of the scene. From left to right: Hannegan Peak, Mt. Sefrit, Mt. Shuksan, Mt. Baker Ski Area, Mt. Baker**

I started at 8AM and even with a fairly long lunch up high I was back to the car fairly early so I drove back down to the highway and then up to Heather Meadows which is by the ski area. I would have to say that the drive from the Nooksack River up to Heather Meadows is one of the more spectacular drives in the state and that’s saying a lot!

Back to Where It All Began - Goat Mountain, 6.25.2020

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