A Haunting History - Iron Goat Trail

I was trying to find where I wrote about this hike before, and somehow I didn't! This was my third time on this trail, purported by some to be the most haunted in Washington. Buckle up, because we got a lot of history to cover with this trail!

Iron Goat Trail
Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest
Parking permit: None at the Interpretive Site trailhead, NW Forest Pass for all other trailheads ($5 per day/$30 per year)
Distance: 12 miles round-trip
Elevation gain: 700'

The trailhead is off of Highway 2, about 32 miles west of Leavenworth. It's just west of Steven's Pass. If you park at the Interpretive Site, no parking permit is needed. There are also trailheads at Martin Creek and Wellington, but a Northwest Forest Pass is required at these.

As you set out from the interpretive site trailhead, you can sign the guest register and pick up a map similar to the one above; the printed ones I found also showed the newer Martin Creek Connector and Kelly Creek Trails that are west of the Martin Creek trailhead (I will have to revisit and explore these someday). The maps mark out the historic mile-markers of the railroad, which are also physically marked on the trail, making it very easy to figure out where you are.

My suggested route is to start at the interpretive site and follow the trail all the way to Wellington, then cut back using the Windy Point crossover trail. This leads to a round-trip hike of around 12 miles.

The caboose adorns the interpretive site trailhead.

The trail follows old railroad grade of the Great Northern Railway. Originally built as a series of switchbacks over the mountain, the First Cascade Tunnel bypassed the hill when it opened in 1900. Winter weather conditions were still harsh. Trains often faced multi-day delays due to snow-covered tracks.

Old trail tunnels, most of them caved-in, dot the trail.

A modern replacement for an old truss bridge

Early on the trail, you'll discover an "adit", a short tunnel used to bore into the tunnel construction area and excavate from the center. This allowed tunnel excavation to happen on three fronts (front, rear, and center), and shortened excavation time. It's a rather impressive feat of engineering, especially considering how difficult it must be to survey the rugged terrain even in modern times in order to line up three excavation sites to all meet up together to make one tunnel.

The adit opening

 Avalanches were always a concern on the railway. In the winter of 1910, a mail train and a passenger train became stuck by a snowstorm at Wellington. They were parked outside of the First Cascade Tunnel due to fears of asphyxiation if the trains were pulled into the tunnel. On March 1st, early in the morning, an avalanche came down just past the hotel in Wellington, wiping both trains off their tracks and down into Tye Creek. 96 souls lost their lives, mostly rail workers. Some believe their spirits linger, leading to the belief that this trail is haunted.

The wall of an old snow shelter. A wood roof and beams would have stretched out from this to protect the tracks from snow.

A scenic privy by Windy Point

The Wellington disaster spurred the creation of several snow shelters along the track to protect future trains. Most of these consisted of a long concrete wall, with a wooden structure extending out over the tracks to protect them. Most of the wood is gone, but the walls remain.

Near Wellington itself, a solid all-concrete snow shelter was built to further reinforce that section of track. The trail leads straight through the quarter-mile snowshed, and there is a memorial to the avalanche disaster about halfway through.

Parts of the trail are almost overgrown. Here you really have to hug the old snowshed wall.

Portion of an old bridge

Inside the Wellington all-concrete snow shelter

In 1929, a new tunnel was built. The Second Cascade Tunnel is six miles long and still in use today by Burlington Northern Santa Fe. It completely bypassed the old grade, making it obsolete. While most of the wood from the snowsheds was harvested and recycled and the buildings are gone from Wellington, the concrete structures remain, a haunting reminder of the people who worked and traveled here and the disaster that happened over a century ago.