[Randy]

Point 6305' is the high point between Gold Lake and Chetwoot Lake and is referred to as Wild Goat Peak. I was joined on this outing by Mike Collins as both of us were eager to summit this mountain prior to the MFK Road being gated at Dingford Creek. We parked at a large pullout at 2700', and a half mile before the end of the MFK Road. We started off at 0730 and walked the road 50 yards then ascended through open forest until coming to the now abandoned logging road at 2800'. This logging road winds its way east and then north eventually becoming a mere trail shortly before a large talus field bordering Hardscrabble Creek to the west. We ascended the talus following the line of the creek. The route is as straight forward as it gets, sometimes on a faint trail and sometimes on talus. We simply kept heading north until hitting the lower of the Hardscrabble Lakes. We traversed talus along the west side of the lower lake then hooked around its north end where we followed a faint trail (north of the outlet creek) through talus and open forest to the upper lake, elevation 4598'. Our next objective was to ascend to a small gap NE of the upper lake between Point 5904' and Point 6080'. To do this we traversed around the west side of the upper lake then ascended about 400' of talus until coming to a couple steeper sections of rock. Little rock ledges and a gully brought us directly under the gap and into a second talus field at 5500'. The rest of the ascent to the gap was made on easy heather slopes. The summit of Wild Goat is plainly visible from the gap and the rest of our route was plainly illustrated right in front of us. The entire east side of the ridge between Point 6080' and Wild Goat Peak is an immense talus field stretching all the way to the top of Wild Goat. From the gap we dropped 100' then began a descending traverse to get below a solitary band of cliffs jutting out from the ridge. Once past the cliffs, we ascended and traversed endless talus to a subtle rock basin a few hundred feet below the summit. From the basin, our route to the top was via the left side of the mountain's SE face and presented few difficulties. The views out to the surrounding summits were great as were the views of Gold and Chetwoot Lakes. We reached the summit just after 1030 and then spent 40 minutes on top reviewing a summer's worth of great outings and of course Mike had much more to review than myself. It's always a good time looking back on past routes and across to places you've sat before. Before we descended, we placed a summit register on top for others to sign in on as to our surprise there was not one there already. We decided to mix up our day a little and descend via Crawford Creek directly down to the Dutch Miller trail as this route involved little to no return elevation gain. We stayed to the left of the creek and followed its line all the way down to the basin at 4300'. We were forced to stray left on a few occasions to avoid cliffs, but the route goes. From the basin, we descended east of the creek through open forest working through a cliff band or two until we got to 3500' where the valley brush began to choke our route. Here we bypassed the brush by rock hopping down the creek bed and before long we found ourselves on the Dutch Miller Trail at 3300'. We leisurely walked the trail 2.5 miles out to the road and ended up making the truck 7 hours after starting out.