Iron Goat Trail, Iron Goat Trail - Winter Route & Wellington Ghost Town — Thursday, Jul. 27, 2023

Walked the Iron Goat trail from Windy Point trailhead at Scenic up to the Wellington Ghost Town and back Thursday morning.  This trailhead is signed as the “iron Goat Interpretive Site” and is just east of Deception Falls along hwy 2.  Parking is free and plentiful at this trailhead.  Vault toilets at both this lot and the eastern Wellington trailhead were open and in good condition.  Total mileage for this out and back walk is about 7.6 miles with about 1070’ gross vertical, (most gained in the initial switchbacks from the lot up to the railroad grade.)  The trails are in great shape - looks like a crew spent some time several weeks ago brushing things back on this section and it looks great, super kudos.  

I like this route in particular because of all the easily accessible history, Windy Point tunnel, big collapsed timber snow shed, gigantic still standing concrete snow shed, western entrance to the old, shorter tunnel under Stevens Pass, etc, etc.  The incident at Wellington in 1910 is sobering, but perhaps a reminder not to mess with Mother Nature too much or she will bite you in the butt.  The other thing I like about this route is the abundance of wild flowers and butterflies in season - today did not disappoint with red paintbrush, daisies, columbine, etc and huge fields of bright purple fireweed all over.  Lastly, don’t miss the pikas, they were all over today with their distinctive >eep! eep!< call, not only in the scree fields but also living in the old snowshed drain holes, (pika condos!)  A beautiful and super interesting, relatively easy walk through a bunch of history and fields of flowers.  

Link to more info about the trail from the USFS - https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/mbs/recarea/?recid=17892

Link to more info about the 1910 avalanche at Wellington -  https://www.historylink.org/File/5127