Like so many alpine meadows, Snowgrass Flats is a beautiful landscape. When Mt. St. Helens erupted these western slopes of the Goat Rocks were more heavily blanketed with ash than anywhere else, save the volcano itself. Now the wildflowers are beginning to rally, pushing through the beds of pumice that cover the meadows.

The Flats are available via the Berrypatch trailhead near Chambers Lake, 16 miles up an access road just 2 miles west of Packwood, WA, signed “Walupt Lake” and “Chambers Lake”. They make an excellent camping spot, but for full appreciation of the area from the Flats you should continue on to Goat Lake (which is also accessible via the Goat Ridge Trail), or if you’re really feeling ambitious, the Goat Rocks Crest.

This trail is part of the Klickitat Trail system used by Native Americans traveling over Cispus Pass to the Klickitat River drainage. Snowgrass Flats is a 10-plus acre subalpine meadow in a bowl near the headwaters of Snowgrass Creek. The area was named for a type of plant that stockmen called snowgrass. — fs.fed.us