Beautiful weather forecast for Tuesday so I was at the Barlow Pass trailhead at 7. Two cars at the trailhead, both belonging to people who overnighted. The trailhead for Gothic Basin appears to have a trail heading away from the road. Don’t take it – it’s much easier to walk the few hundred feet south-east along the road and get to the trail without an annoying detour.
It’s an interesting trail. The first 1.5 miles are virtually flat, followed by a mile of steep switchbacks through forest with some monster old-growth trees. Then the views open up as the trail winds south and the forest gives way to alpine tundra, with some tricky stream crossings and sudden changes in gradient.
Gothic Basin is absolutely beautiful but it’s attracting more hikers than its fragile little Alpine plants can cope with. Today was a work day with helicopters bringing in a bunch of new toilets, which will be made operational in the next few days. The place needs them because for anyone overnighting in the Basin, there’s no real place to bury your products far enough away from any water supply. It would be a real pity for the pristine waters to be polluted.
Once you have had your fill of the lovely Foggy Lake, fabulous views are available. The AllTrails route up to Gothic Peak gives you what I will now describe. Going up to the saddle south-west from the lake brings you to a pretty tarn, from which you can see Tahoma and a lot of other peaks. The best way up is probably to take the snow. It’s still firm and a lot easier to deal with than the rock fields. There is a campsite at the tarn, but it’s a little soggy.
From the tarn, follow the ridge west and upwards. There are a few route options but today, the best involved taking the gaps between the rock and the melting snowbanks. As you go up, Glacier Peak appears to the northeast and the eastern horizon reveals the peaks of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The snowmelt tumbling down to Foggy Lake is clean and delicious (and cold). The final scramble up the summit block is made easier by the firm rock with a lot of hand/footholds. The drawback is that it’s really sharp, and you will end up with a few lesions on your hands.
The view from Gothic Peak is OMG. The final part of your 360 degree visual smorgasbord (Baker and Shuksan) hits you as you reach the top. It’s kind of fun to see how many peaks you can recognize. Going down presents its own special challenges and my method involving a lot of contact between sharp rocks and my back cost me a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Del Campo is also accessible from Foggy Lake but it’s a few degrees of difficulty harder than Gothic Peak.
The register for Gothic Peak is all present and correct in Ziplock bag and waterproof bottle but the register itself has got wet at some stage and the paper is pulped and impossible to write on or read. If you are a public-spirited person and planning a Gothic scramble, it might be nice to take some paper and a new Ziplock up there.
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