We found our first backpacking route using Craig Romano’s informative guidebook, “Backpacking Washington”. We chose the Green River and Goat Mountain trail. We knew it would be difficult at 20 miles and 3500 feet in elevation gain but we hoped that the views would outweigh the weight of our packs. The hike is located in the southern Cascades surrounding Mount Saint Helens. Part of our hike actually took us through sections of the blast zone from the 1980 Mount Saint Helen’s volcanic eruption. Thirty years had done a lot for the area and it was difficult to tell whether we…
Mount Washington
Mount Washington was our first attempt at summiting a peak in the Cascades. It also proved to be our first successful summit! On the seventh of July, 2012 we summited Mount Washington (4,420 feet). This hike was extremely private, we only passed three or four other groups. This may have had something to do with our very early start. We were done hiking the 8.5 miles with more than 3,000 feet in elevation gain by 1:00 p.m. The Mount Washington hike featured on the WTA website has you stop 2 miles in at a viewpoint. We continued to the summit…