Goat Mountain and Deadman's Lake, Green River — Saturday, Aug. 8, 2026

Desperate to get outside somewhere new and without smoke/wildfires, we landed on Goat Mountain and Deadman’s Lake.

Since I love a loop, we decided to hike it in conjunction with the Green River trail starting clockwise from the Goat Mountain trailhead off of FR 2612.

The road to the trailhead is okay. It is almost entirely paved, but it is mostly single lane and has tight turns, encroaching brush, and limited sight lines. There are also a few short sections gravel that have a really rough drop off from the pavement. Any car can make it, but I’d definitely recommend taking it slow.

As another trip reported mentioned, this trailhead is not developed and does not actually need a parking pass (though it’s always a safe bet to bring one!).

The Green River trail starts off downhill with several miles of monoculture forest before finally reaching old growth which was beeeautiful.

We continued on past Vanson Lake and opted to camp at Deadman’s since it seemed like the more scenic of the two. We were delighted to not encounter any bugs (mosquitos or biting flies) at the lake and there was only one other group camped out for the night.

We headed out early the next morning for a quick 5 mile descent back to the trailhead. East of Deadman’s Lake is finally when you break free of the trees and get some views of Rainier to the north and St. Helens and Hood to the south (we could even see the smoke plume from the Grasshopper fire).

As others have noted, this ridge is DRY and there is no outflow from Deadman’s Lake (as least that we could find) — so definitely stock up with plenty of running water near the Vanson Lake turnoff unless you want to drink warm, stagnant lake water.

In total, we only saw 7 people. Very empty trails out here!