Goat Island Mountain (Mount Rainier)

We did a CCW loop, ascending the ENE ridge (as others have recently done).  There's a wide spot along the road big enough for 3 vehicles, and much less popular than the Fryingpan Ck TH :)  There is a fairly obvious way-trail for most of the way up the ridge.  Around 5700' elevation head generally S to intersect the E ridge - this is more "scrambly", with vegie belays quite useful for a few hundred feet.  This slackens and the views become magnificent, only getting better once the top is attained.  The ridge walk is great easy fun.  The final drop to the saddle takes a bit of route-finding to avoid cliffing out.  The route descending towards SummerLand is vague we didn't have significant issues avoiding most brushy tangles.  Around 5700' we cut across several creeks, some which took time to find the best crossing-points.  We crossed roughly SE holding the same elevation until we intersected the SummerLand trail.

Everyone seemed very happy with the route.  It's shorter than the listed version (10.5 miles) with a bit more elevation gain (~4200') in 8 hours (lots of stops).  Only disappointment was the clouds which obscured the mountain above ~8500' (still a beautiful day!)