Iron Goat - Wellington Ghost Town
From the comfort of my couch, it can be so easy to forget just how much I'm energized by time spent outdoors. Fall in particular is a challenging but important time for me to overcome my inertia and resist my temptation to spend the shorter, rainy days at home binge watching TV while plugging away at my current knitting project. I need as much time as possible out in the fiery beauty of fall, soaking in every falling leaf and newly emerged fungi before they all vanish for another year. So when two friends suggested in August that the three of us take a random Monday in October off work to go for a hike, I had to say yes. I was even prepared with a suggestion for the trail, Iron Goat to Wellington Ghost Town. I’d hiked the trail once before in October and remembered an easy hike along a spooky abandoned railroad corridor, framed by blazing maples.
We met at the trailhead on a gorgeous misty morning, and with the heat of summer finally gone but weather still dry, I was surprised that we were the only cars at the trailhead, even on a Monday morning. While it was chilly in the parking lot, we all quickly shed layers as the trail began to climb up to the old railroad grade in short switchbacks. Even with me stopping to photograph nearly every mushroom we passed, we reached the top in what felt like no time. From the top the trail followed the nearly flat grade of an old rail line, and we fell into an easy pace where conversation catching up over the last months flowed easily.
The stretch of trail we followed was once the Great Northern Railway's route through the Cascades, but was closed in 1929 after the deadliest avalanche in American history. After a series of avalanches left a train stranded near Wellington for 3 days during the winter of 1910, one final avalanche swept the train off the mountain, killing nearly 100 people. Even on a bright, peaceful day over a century later, a chilling stillness lingers in the air around the site of that tragedy. Close to the lookout marking the site of the fatal avalanche, spooky misshapen trees attempt to creep out from under the concrete snow shed, which was built after the avalanche to offer additional protection to trains until the new, lower elevation route could be completed. Few places in Washington feel truly haunted, but this trail is one of them!