Iron Goat Trail

Iron Goat Trail is located on the west side of Steven's Pass just before you really start to climb up the pass.  There's an interpretive center at the trail head which talks about the railroad that used to go through here, and the incredible hardships they encountered trying to keep it open and operable in the winter months.  This area receives a ridiculous amount of snow in the winter, and has numerous avalanches every winter.  At one point in 1910, a train full of passengers was swept off the track by an avalanche and swept down into the Tye River below!  Nearly 100 people died in that event.

Now, the tracks are gone, and there is a wonderful trail in its place.

The interesting thing about this trail, is you run across all the relics from the time when the train ran through here and the amazing things they did to try to protect them from avalanches, like this huge wall that runs in nearly mile-long sections.

The wall is aging now, with water often seeping out of it leaving lots of calcium deposits.  The wall was put here to support a wooden snow shelter that went over the tracks.  The shelter was made of huge timbers and was much like the porch of house in design.  The avalanche would slide over the top and continue down the hill below, leaving the train intact.

Here's Indy relaxing while Jared takes pictures.

The other amazing thing they did here is create incredibly long tunnels through the mountain to further protect the trains.

This little cave is actually an access tunnel the engineers dug out to the center of where the real tunnel would be.  This was apparently common practice, and they would use it tunnel from the inside out.

They also had a little reservoir above the train area with a wooden spillway.  This was more difficult to get to, but was pretty interesting to look at.  This existed to help fight fires that the old steam trains would often cause as they went through the area.  Burned down forest was no help in thwarting avalanches, and in fact made them much worse, so they figured out that they needed to protect the forest to save themselves.

There were great views all around, and the day was perfect at about 78 degrees.