| Date: | 6/15/2012 |
|---|---|
| Hikers: | Tim & Eric |
| Elevation Gain: | 1500 ft |
| Total Distance: | 12 mi |
| Access: |
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| Weather: | Sunny |
This Hike was pretty, though there wasn’t much wild life to see, the only real animal (besides birds) we saw was a deer on the drive up, who wanted to cross the road and give me an attention/break test. We got to the Trail head at about 10:10 and on the trail at 10:20am there were about 8 cars in the parking lot on this Friday morning. On this particular hike there are two routes to take for the main part of the trial, we took the lower rout (lower Elliot vs. upper Elliot – I think). The lower rout took you along Elliot Creek for the entire distance; I suspect that the upper rout is more of an old logging road trial- maybe a better grade but you can’t compete with walking along a raging creek. About thee quarters of the way up the two trials reconnect for the main climb up to the lake past the main falls. The falls is slightly visible from the main trail but if you follow the side path when you first hear the falls, you can get an excellent view from the base (40 yards off trail).
We got to Goat Lake at 12:30pm, the official trail ends here, though we chose to wrap around the lake on a less official trail to get away from the main lunch/viewpoint. This turned into about a half mile trek of quickly deteriorating trail that ends with more bushwhacking than trail walking and fording of a few small creeks on slippery rocks and logs. This walk was well worth it though. Where the trail ends is in a steep snow bank there is a nice large rock sticking out into the lake right past a very scenic waterfall (that you forded moments before). 1:00pm we had our lunch. From this vantage point you could see the full lake as it wrapped around the hillside across the lake (only a partial view from the main view point) waterfalls of all sizes falling from large snow fields in on the peaks. Left our lunch spot at 2:00pm and it took another half hour to get back to the main trail to start our descent, got back to the car at a quarter after 4pm.
When we got back the car (4:30pm) our sunny day was just starting to cloud over; always good to get an early start when weather can be iffy. There were about 15 cars there when we left, but crowds were never a problem on the trail or our extended lunch break. All in all great day, good hike for most anyone, not strenuous with great easily accessible views.
