Heather Creek Trail via Upper Dungeness River, Deception Basin & Royal Basin via Royal Lake — Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025

I wasn't sure whether I should post a trip report, because I don't want to encourage people to hike the route I took.  But I decided to go ahead with what you might call a cautionary tale.

I first saw Deception Basin on a hike into upper Royal Basin a few years ago, when I climbed to the top of Deception Pass and looked down into this hidden Shangri-La.  It was a stunning cirque, dotted with tarns and dominated by Mount Deception, Mount Mystery, Mount Fricaba, and Hal Foss Peak, with not a trail or tent in sight.

So, this week I decided to venture into the basin by making a one-night loop, entering via Upper Dungeness/Heather Creek trails and exiting via Royal Basin trail, for a total of 19.3 miles.  This route includes 4 miles of off-trail travel.  Other trip reports made this route seem feasible, though it seems that people have more often done the route in the opposite direction.

The first 7 miles were easy.  Upper Dungeness and Heather Creek trails were in great shape.  It appeared that someone had recently cleared it, and there were only two duck-under logs across it.  The only minor glitch was at the campsite 4.5 miles in, called Grindstone Camp, which is by the creek in a meadow.  Several trails diverge there, and I mistakenly took the one toward the camp.  I should have stayed left.  Not a big deal once I realized my mistake.  Rather than backtrack, I made a short bushwhack through the forest to find the trail.  

The footlog over Heather Creek was intact.  (This was the last place to fill up on water, which I did, but I later regretted not getting more.)  About a half-mile past the footlog was a fire ring on the left and a big pile of trash nearby.  It looked like it dated back decades, because it included pieces of a cast-iron stove and a charred hob-nailed logger's boot.

At 7 miles, just after passing a sign indicating I was entering the national park, an obvious boot path appeared on the right, just as the main trail ahead was dropping.  (I believe the sign is misplaced, because according to Gaia, the boundary was actually a couple hundred yards to the south.)  The elevation here is 4200 ft, some 2300 ft below the nameless pass between Mt Fricaba and Hal Foss Peak that is the gateway to Deception Basin.  I figured the boot path was my best shot, and I took it.  It climbed the west side of a rocky shoulder, and remained distinct for about 500 ft of elevation gain.  There were even a couple of faded bits of orange plastic flagging.  But at around 4700 ft, it disappeared in a broad scree slope.  Or at least, if it continued, I couldn't see it.  I continued my ascent as the scree steepened, trying to keep to the right where there was more solid ground.  But eventually, it was just scree everywhere, loose and resting at the angle of repose, so that the ground gave way with every step.  It was like trying to walk up the down escalator, but much steeper and with more dire consequences if I should stumble.  I often had to use both hands and feet.  

After gaining a few hundred more feet, I had to start sidehilling left across broad scree slopes toward the pass.  To stay on an even contour, I had to step up with every sideways step, to compensate for the elevation I lost as the scree gave way under my weight.  This was exhausting, and I soon ran through all my water.  But I could hear the sound of running water in the distance, and that motivated me to keep going.  Eventually, I reached a greener V in the valley with firmer ground, and after thrashing through some brush, found a lovely little cascade at 5400 ft to slake my thirst.

Beyond here, the next 1000 ft to the pass were a mix of scree, talus, and some vegetated ground.  I saw a marmot, who seemed to find me interesting.  Finally, I topped the pass, and it was an easy 500-ft descent along a series of rock ledges and scree slopes to a good campsite in Deception Basin.  I made camp at 7 p.m., 10 hours after starting from Upper Dungeness Trailhead.  The final 1.8 miles had taken me 5 hours.  As far as I could see, I was the only person in the basin.

The evening was overcast, and at first the light on the basin was flat and gray, but just as I finished dinner the sunset painted everything in pinks and purples and I was transfixed with the beauty of the place.  Deception Creek drains the basin through a notch between Mt Mystery and Mt Deception, and directly through the notch Mt Olympus was shimmering far to the west.

It started raining just as I turned in, and it rained intermittently through the night.  The rain had stopped by the time I got up, and I started hiking at 7 a.m.  I could see my objective above and to the northwest:  Deception Pass.  It's not the lowest notch in the ridge, but a saddle a bit higher and to the east of the notch.  I had to contour around a couple of shoulders and lose a couple hundred feet to cut below cliff bands before I could start climbing toward the pass.  I was able to stay in the green, on firmer ground, for much of the 700-ft climb, but the last 300 ft were loose scree.  I made the pass at 8:30 a.m.  

From there, it was an easy cruise back to the trailhead, at least compared to the previous day's grind.  A good boot path descends from the pass to the main trail in Upper Royal Basin, and it was mostly downhill from there.  I counted 13 logs down on the Royal Basin Trail from Royal Lake to the park boundary, and it was quite brushy in places, particularly around Lower Royal Meadow Camp.  I encountered several hiking parties on their way in.

Would I ever hike this route again?  Definitely not.  Nor would I recommend it to anyone else.  It's not just hard, it's sketchy, and it was a bad idea for me to do it solo.  It would be far better to enter Deception Basin from the Royal Basin side and exit the same way.  And really, you get an amazing view of Deception Basin from the top of Deception Pass, so maybe that's good enough.

Total distance: 19.3 miles.  Total elevation gain: 5479 ft.