Steven's Pass Historic District (29Jul11)

I actually did this little hiking tour between the Rainier trip and the Evergreen Lookout, but, I'm just now deciding to blog about it.  Why?  I don't know, because it's 11:40 pm and I'm bored and Curt has duty tonight.

The Steven's Pass Historic District isn't like a downtown historic district type of place.  Its shining star is the Iron Goat Trail (www.irongoat.org) which is a trail set along the old railroad bed of the Great Northern Railway.  Now, I'm not going to get into all the history, you can look that up for yourself.  The only thing that I'll say about it is that there was a little town called Wellington, which is no long there, that unwillingly played host to the worst avalanche disaster in American history.  For more information on this check out the book The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche by Gary Krist.

Awesome concrete snowshed

Now, my hike(s).  I go to the Iron Goat every summer and hike some part of it.  There are 3 trailheads after all.  In 2009 I was so intrigued by the railroad history and the idea that there was this whole town that's completely gone, that I started out at the Wellington Trailhead and hiked down and around to the west portal of the Windy Point Tunnel.  In 2010, I started at the Scenic Trailhead and hiked to the Martin Creek TH and then up the crossover trail and hiked the upper grade to the Windy Point Tunnel and then down the switchbacks of the Windy Point Crossover trail back to Scenic.  So I have hiked the whole trail, something like 12 miles.  One day, I'll do the whole thing, but I'll need someone to drop me off and pick me up.  That brings me to this year, 2011.  I decided to re-visit Wellington and it's awesome snowsheds.

Old Cascade Tunnel

Let me just have an aside for a moment...before I came to Wellington, I drove over the pass to find a hike called "By Gones and Byways".  It's supposedly a short interpretive hike just off of Hwy 2.  Now, you can only get to it if you're going west and I was going east so I had to find a place to do a u-turn below the pass and head back up.  The first time I didn't go far enough and went back down.  I finally found it, I mean, there IS a brown sign.  The parking is just a lane added onto Hwy 2. (here I might add that Hwy 2 is affectionately know to locals as the Highway of Death).  So, I park...er...pull over and grab my pack and head down the little trail.  It's a nice little trail and there were numbered posts, however there was a lack of interpretation.  There was pretty much nothing on the trailhead board.  I wandered through a short loop, took some pictures and totally got the heebee geebees.  It was time to get the heck out of Dodge!  Don't know what those were all about, probably too close to the road and any ax murderer who might happen to be driving by, but heebee geebees means leave immediately.  It was after this that I went to the safety of the Iron Goat Wellington Trailhead.  There were a few cars there and some people, but no ax murderers.  First stop was to take a look at the Old Cascade Tunnel and then start down the nice paved grade and on to the snowshed.

When you come out of the all-concrete snowshed, there is a concrete snowshed wall that continues on and off the length of the grade.  These snowsheds had timber roofs that were salvaged when the line shut down.  This portion of the railway was abandoned in 1929 when the new Cascade Tunnel was completed and the rails moved lower down in the valley.  Anyway, Mother Nature has found a way to make a very unnatural concrete wall assimilate...

Waterfall coming off a concrete snowshed wall

What it looked like then.

I wandered, enjoying the flowers and the sun and thinking about what it was like when trains actually went through there and out of nowhere, two Navy jets flew over.  That sort of brought me back home a bit.  I don't reckon they had Navy jets screamin' through there back in the early 1900's.  And, I mean, they were low too.   It's too bad I didn't get a picture.  I kept trekking on down the gentle grade until I came across a collapsed timber snowshed.  I decided to turn around here which was unfortunate because the trail then goes into the nice shady pines, but, I figured that was enough and I wanted to get back to the truck so I could stop one more place on the way home.

What it looks like now.

So, back I went and I only ran into 4 people on the way.  I got back to my truck and had an AWESOME bento that I had packed for myself--no, I do not have a picture I was too busy eating--and then on to more exploration.  I decided to drive down the Old Cascade Highway the rest of the way to see where it went.  I just ended at a foot bridge and then picked up again on the other side of the Tye River.  Now, it's beyond me why they can't maintain a regular bridge when they can maintain a foot bridge, but whatever.  Not to mention, the hundreds of bridges on forest service roads that are actually worse roads than the Old Cascade Hwy, but I digress... On to my next stop!  Started on my way towards home and stopped at Deception Falls, another interpretive trail right off of Hwy 2.

Crossing over Deception Creek

I know, you're probably thinking, "Didn't she learn anything from the earlier heebee geebee incident?"  This is entirely different all together.  There's an actual parking lot and it's quite popular.  I'm gonna call this a No Heebee Geebee Zone!  There is a loop trail there, but I just wanted to see the falls so I skipped all the mumbo jumbo and headed directly towards rushing water.  I had to cross over the "creek" and go under Hwy 2 and then up to a little viewing area to see the falls.  They were deceptive...ok, not really.  They looked like falls to me.

Upper Deception Falls

Thus ended my hike(s).  I got back in my dusty chariot and headed home.  It was a very good day.