Goat Mtn. Overlook hike

 Yesterday (Friday's) our hike was the Goat mtn. overlook. I kept thinking I'd done it with the Senior Trailblazers, but I guess I hadn't, I have no blog record of it. The only time I'd been there apparently was in September of 2014 with my husband. We had tried to summit that day but the trail or lack of trail was sketchy at the upper meadow and I didn't feel comfortable continuing, so we turned around before summiting. You can read about that day's hike HERE. The skies were clear on that day and we had some great views.

It was cloudy with a chilly start for our hike yesterday. We parked and the upper lot near the restroom and walked down to the trailhead.

My husband and Scoutina at the sign-in trail register.

Did you know that slugs like to eat mushrooms?

As we were hiking along my husband showed me a wire he had noticed on some hikes he had taken before. It appears to be left from when the Lookout used to be in the area. The wire and the insulator are visible between the two trees.

We found the old Lookout trail, it takes off to the right as you are hiking up the trail. You can see a large broken tree branch on the ground paralleling the trail in the photo below. There is no sign informing what the side trail goes to. I found a great article that includes photos of the old Lookout site. 

You can read the short article HERE.

There were a few heart rocks along the trail

The vegetation free forest broke out into these wonderful little green areas here and there.

Our Scoutina savoring a prize stick.

Boardwalk section of the trail

We then came to an area where there was more light and the forest changed to Alder and Vine maples and lots of vegetation. The trail was quite brushy.

Thimble berries and Blueberries made an appearance, along with some early signs of fall color.

The clouds were in and out with some peek a boo moments from the sun, so we were able to get some views off and on.

Looking northwest towards the Welcome pass trail area.

The top of Goat mountain in the distance. 

Blueberries were plentiful

The trail has been uphill most of the time but now in the open it really goes up. 

There were many rock steps until our lunch spot.

Mt. Sefrit visible at the overlook. Hannegan peak is to the left of Sefrit and Shuksan is to it's right.

I took a screenshot of the peaks that my iphone's Peakfinder app showed. 

Enlarge the photo to better read the peak names.

We could see the Mt. Baker ski area across the way.

The zoomed in look at the ski area.

The view looking up from the overlook

My Summer hike bucket list verification photo.

There was a very chilly breeze blowing at our lunch stop. So on came the jackets.

The clouds tried to clear a bit for a view of Shuksan.

Scoutina and I enjoying the views and the welcome short window of the Sun's warmth.

As we made our way down the trail, I turned and took one more look at the mountain. It was bittersweet because I know I'm not fit enough to hike to the top as it was quite the effort for me just to make it to the overlook. Someday??? Who knows.

Back into the forest and the nice soft fir needle surface of the trail for the ever downward trek.

The wilderness area sign attached to a tree.

I forgot to take a photo of it on our way up, so here it is now near the end of our hike.

A very hard day's hike for me. I questioned my Summer bucket list quest as I worked on the last uphill before lunch, but as usual as we were making our way back down my energy reappeared and I was filled with satisfaction for meeting the challenge of the day. As the season is changing and the daylight hours are less each day, I'm hoping we'll finish the hikes on our list. We are running out of days where we can hike in the high country areas of the mountains. We had 14 hikes on our combined Summer hikes bucket list, one more was added last night😄. Now our bucket list has 15 hikes on it! We've completed 10, we have 5 to go and hopefully enough nice weather days to complete them. I need at least a couple of rest day in between hikes so we'll see if we finish the list.

Trail rating: HARD (yes, all caps for my added opinion)

Total distance: 8 miles by my Garmin

Total ascent: 2711feet

Track of our route