Iron Goat!

The Iron Goat trail follows what used to be a railroad through the Stevens Pass area; if I'm not mistaken, the term "Iron Goat" refers to trains. I was inspired to try this trail for a variety of reasons. First of all, it's one of the closer hikes featured in Charles Gurche's Washington's Best Wildflower Hikes, and I was in the mood for flowers. Second, I wanted a trail easy and short enough that I would not be in huge trouble in the event of afternoon storms--which, in fact, there were, but right after I left. Perfect timing.

Now down to business. First are some flower closeups I took. Flowers are everywhere along this trail - tiger lily, columbine, bluebell, false lily of the valley, cow parsnip, springbeauty, Cooley's hedge nettle, pentstemons, and still others. It quickly became apparent to me why Gurche chose it for his books. Also, fireweed is growing profusely; when it blooms, the trail will be amazing.

The first one is cropped a bit to resemble what I had in mind. On a narrow trail with thick plants crowding in, it can be hard to get my camera and tripod set up as close to flowers as I'd like. But, with cropping, I think this tiger lily came out well. I had really wanted to capture the underside of the flower, something I don't think I've really tried with flowers.

Also, after a few recent disappointments, I finally stumbled across some wild columbine. They must really like water, since I usually found them growing by streams or in boggy areas. This was my best of the lot:

This next one I would like except for the out-of-focus stems on the left. So close, though!

The Cooley's hedge nettle are beginning to pop out in a few spots. After a couple abortive attempts, I finally found a plant at a suitable height for my tripod and took this picture:

Finally, a mossy surface covered with flowers, springbeauty I believe.

Another highlight of the trail was the incredibly lush forest. I don't think I've ever seen a forest with such a thick understory of ferns. On many trails, going off-trail is simply in bad taste unless absolutely necessary. On many parts of this trail, though, it would have been impossible. Alders predominated. Overall, it was one of the nicer second-growth forests I've been in. Here are my best compositions:

The trail also has some nice views, I found, that get better as you keep going (and get a better angle looking into one of the far away valleys). This shot of cow parsnip and the view turned out okay - the colors are a bit dull, partially because of the harsh midday lighting. It was filtered a bit by clouds, but not enough at that moment. Oh well, it's okay, and a concept to save for different conditions.

Finally, this shot of some ferns and one of the streams along the trail. I originally shot it at f/6.3 to isolate the fern in the foreground a bit more; upon further reflection, I decided to also try it at f/8. I ended up preferring the latter aperture - it gave some more definition to the mini-waterfall, which is an important part of the composition.

There are also some historical structures along the trail: old tunnels, snowsheds, etc. from the railroad. I didn't focus on these, only taking this one photograph of one of the tunnels: