Iron Goat Trail

Well the day started off with us trying to hike the Mineral City Town Site but was thwarted by road construction. So another 20 miles down the road, the Iron Goat Trail was our destination. We have hiked the Iron Goat Trail a couple times but not since 2006 and never completely from end to end.


This trail is an old train route that I first discovered in one of the Rails To Trails books and is also included in the 60 Great Hikes book. The trail has an upper and lower grade and we set off to take the upper grade all the way from the Martin Creek Trailhead to the Wellington trailhead (about 6 miles and 12 miles round trip).

The first of many water stops for Bogie.

The site is full of history and well placed signs explaining the background of the trail. The trail is also one of the best maintained trails I’ve seen this year. There is a bunch of tunnels, spillways, viewpoints, nature and even a Moria like section of this trail. Has to be one of the better 6 mile hikes in the state of Washington.

You can hike up to one of the spillways and check out the waterfall.



Here you can see some of the great views and one of the many backwalls you come across.





Here you can see the trail to Wellington starting about 4 miles into the hike. You can see the Moria like all concrete snowshed and it is a little eerie but also very cool. You can see one end that is damaged and that adds to the freaky factor a little more.

Coming back from Wellington, we took the switchback trail down to the lower grade at the Windy Point Crossover. This was a lot steeper and longer than it looked on the map. Just when you thought it was over, you would have another series of switchbacks to complete. The lower grades is not to be missed though, with a number of unique tunnels, an adit (a short tunnel used in construction that has wicked cold air coming out of it), great views of its own and a nice little footbridge to enjoy.

Here you can see an avalanche site that happened back in February of this year. The trail has been adapted to not only deal with the pile of trees but to allow you a closer look at it. It is mid September as I write this and was stunned to see that under the pile of trees, was the remainder of the avalanche ice!

Here is the cool little footbridge I talked about and you can see the almost 12 mile hike has even worn Bogie out a little bit.