We hit the trail at 9 am. The hike starts out easy enough, with a stroll down the Monte Cristo road. Man, that road is gone. One whole section was completely washed away, and is now a cliff down to the river. No problem for walkers, though, just pick your way over the upper part of the slide, or take the upper re-route road, which appears will someday accommodate vehicles.

We saw lots of colorful foliage on the flat part of the Weden Creek trail, and had no problems crossing the slide area on the trail. Weden creek is an easy rock-hop, then the fun starts. Up and up, relentlessly, the trail climbs a gazillion switchbacks. Sometimes the trail is really rocky, sometimes it's really steep, sometimes both, never neither. We made decent time by sluggish standards, helped by the cold temperatures, hurt by the humidity and the lack of a morning breeze.

After the switchbacks, the trail turns very rough, with lots of large step-ups, big rocks in the trail, roots, etc. But there are benefits: views start opening up of surrounding peaks, and there are several nice waterfalls and scenic gullies to traverse. The avalanche gully is melted out, no issues there anymore. Then the trail gets really bad, I guess "nasty" is the right word. Steep gullies with wet, sharply-angled rock slabs, rocks rocks and more rocks, just about the crappiest trail I've ever seen. Some sections are not hiking at all, unless hiking means being on all fours, or dangling from trail-side roots and branches while your legs spin like a cartoon character just before he takes off running.

After that heck, the trail returns to just normal, everyday awfulness, steep, rocky, muddy where not rocky, large steps (as much as 3 ft in one step), apparently endless. I thought I must be almost there a dozen times, and I was wrong eleven times. It took me forever to get there, even though I tried hard, kept going steadily and felt pretty strong (for me). Finally, at 1:30 pm, 4 1/2 hours after leaving the car, I was there: heaven.

What a great place, and it better be after that trail. Small tarns reflecting peaks near and far, polished granite slabs all around, mountains towering over a high alpine valley, waterfalls, snowfields (last year's snow), relative solitude (for such a nice, sunny Sunday), places to explore, it's a veritable wonderland. And after resting just two short hours I was ready to start exploring. We didn't waste the time, though, we picnicked, enjoyed a coupe of beverages, lounged on sunny rocks sheltered from the breeze, and took many photographs. Then we went up to Foggy Lake via the outlet stream, and had a whole 'nother picnic up there, on the little rocky peninsula that juts into the near side of the lake. We moved from there to stay in the sun as it went behind the mountains, milking it for all we could. It was quite pleasantly warm when the conditions were right. We trekked around the valley a bit, working our way towards the trail out, and then at 6 pm we bailed down the trail.

We wanted to get past the worst of the gullies before dark, but we left too late for that. We were using headlamps for about half of the worst stretches. Lighting wasn't the problem, just the difficulty of the trail. It would be very easy to break a leg or pull a groin muscle or blow out a knee or roll an ankle on this trail, very easy. I wanted to get the hike out over with as soon as possible, but every strategy for dealing with the obstacles had to start with avoiding injury. Getting hurt is always the slowest way out. Yetiman is pretty athletic, Daisy had a harness with a "suitcase handle" on top, and I had two trekking poles, so we all made it through OK. The stream crossings on the traversing section of the trail made for a few nice places to take quick breaks, water the dog and rinse off the sweat.

The switchback section down to Weden creek was endless. I think I may still be up there somewhere, and I'm only hallucinating that I'm home writing a TR. I then figured "I'm almost back, all the rough trail is done, hooray", but there was still the matter of a couple of miles back to the car on the trail and then the road. Even though I was completely spent, I still enjoyed this part, simply because I wasn't scrambling downhill on mini-boulders. It was 9:30 when we finally got back to the car.

We had a great day despite the effort involved. What we saw actually seems more worthwhile because it was hard. But if I ever go back a third time, I'm going to camp out up there a couple of nights, so the middle day will be free for exploration and scramble attempts at Gothic peak or Del Campo.

Trip stats (from Barlow Pass to Foggy lake):

10 miles round-trip (seems like more)

3,000 vertical feet net (difference between low point on trail and high point at Foggy lake)

3,750 vertical feet gross (375 feet of downhill on the way in which must be re-climbed on the way in and again on the way out)

Pictures can be seen at www.flickr.com/photos/slugman