Two trails here. The Goat Peak trail goes up left fairly steeply at the get-go. Almost relentless. J and I were ahead. I waited for the group at the first viewpoint marked on the map: an open ridge at ~4300, ~1 mile in. I ate an apple, then offered the core to the dog, but she refused it.
~15 minutes later, a spur trail leads to this rock. Fun to scramble to the top.
Half an hour later is a spur to the 3rd viewpoint. Another short ridge. Took some photos but didn't stop here. 0.3 mile before the summit, at the junction with American Ridge trail, J was waiting. Another open ridge. We waited for the rest of the group. I ate lunch, dried my socks.
The summit (6375') is an easy scramble, which you can attempt from all directions. There's a summit registry.
Total maybe 3 miles. Good view all around: Bumping Lake, Mt Adams to the south, Rainier to the west, quite lots of yellow larch amidst green conifers below. One ham radio enthusiast arrived while we were there. He setup his gadget and made calls.
Instead of go down the same way, we continued west. The first half mile is not well established. There's supposed to be a longer better trail (0.7 mile) which we didn't see. MJ didn't have a map, and got a bit lost. She blew her whistle and yelled. I was not far, and yelled back which direction for her to turn. We waited for the rest at the junction of American Ridge and Pleasant Valley. Took the right trail down to Pleasant Valley, about 2 some miles. At the bottom we turned right along American River. Flat, 2.3 miles. The "river" is creek-size. The water is very clear, gravel bottom. Some of my group saw salmon here. We were back at the car ~4:30pm. Waited for an hour for the last 5 people. I finished my book, and started going through it again.
On the drive back, the other car decided to wait for sunset at the highway pullout here. Not the best sunset. That's about 40 minutes. Then we all drove to Enumclaw for dinner. In N's car, the 3 passengers wanted to go home earlier. N obliged. The restaurant looked very busy, likely a long wait.
Reached P&R around 8pm. J gave me a ride to downtown, on his way to Fremont. I fell asleep early today before laundry was finished.
A new area for me. I never knew there are so many western larches here.
