Trailhead: Goose Lake TH, Google maps will guide you there. 2WD is probably fine for this road.
This is a highly recommended six pointer. It is a beautiful hike through meadows and up lighly forested granite slopes. The trail is well traveled, and even when snow covered the trail, we could head the general correct direction and soon see a cairn pointing the way. Be careful to not accidentally head up the trail to Twin Lakes, as we did for a few yards. I'm sure the lakes are wonderful, but the summit was our objective.
It is understandably easy to follow the trail all the way to the fire lookout. It is a goregous location with wonderful views, flat, stumps to sit on. It looks like an excellent place to operate from, but don't set that gear up yet! The actually summit is a whole 4 feet higher, but there's enough of a saddle to place the fire lookout outside the activation zone. Traverse the ridge (easy bushwack) to gain the summit proper and get OTA. I made the blunder of QSOing with KJ7EHA from the lookout and then doublechecked the map and had to postpone our S2S by another 15 minutes as we hiked to the summit proper.
After updating the log with KJ7EHA, I got to work. And work it was! I had a tough time even with a yagi getting my 4 QSOs on 2 meters. I was quite surprised no one was doing the contest. After managing 4 2m QSOs, I got on 30m CW. I had a tough time with my copy and my key kept sticking. I muddled through 3 QSOs and had to call it a day.
The hike down is just as beautiful. As a Californian who's been living in west Oregon, I really missed hiking on granite. What an enjoyable rock. There's even a beautiful shear zone that the trail crosses that showcases gneiss and wonderful ptygmatic folding. Even some breccia. Perhapse the shear zone was still active during exumation. I digress. This is a wonderful hike and I highly recommend this activation if you are in the area.
