Gothic Basin — Saturday, Jul. 10, 1999

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

The new construction done on the first mile or so of the trail is fabulous. It's so much better than walking through the continuos muck-holes and root wads that were there before. There's now lots of nice puncheon, turnpikes and drainage structures. Only a few slightly muddy spots remain in areas were the drainage was probably hard to read. I really liked what the did with the only major stream crossing. Getting across the stream is now as easy as stepping from one rock pillar to the next. The pillars are composed of large river rocks held together with a little concrete. The three major snow gullies are all still choked with snow. Crossing them is easy, but make sure you carry an ice ax and now how to use it - the run out is bad on each. Beyond the third gully, the trail is difficult to follow. It's a mixture of dirty snow and brush. I tried following the true trail as best I could, but the snow kept disappearing into tangled brush. A better choice would probably have been to stay high on the continuos snow. I thought I was on target to reach King-Kong's Showerbath, but wound up at the base of the falls beneath. The gully was too deep to cross and I was trapped between cliff bands above and below me so I worked my way back and up. Soon I found myself high up on steep snow slopes at the top of the falls leading to the third snow gully. I didn't like being there so much so I backtracked again, back down to third snow gully crossing. By this time I was pretty battered and losing my enthusiasm so I decided to call it a day. I stopped back at the twin bridges crossing of the Sauk and napped in the sun for a while. This was a nice alternative. The first of the two bridges has been replaced, but the second is still collapsed and impassable to cars.