Gothic Basin — Saturday, Jun. 24, 2000

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

What a glorious day! Lower section of trail is in great shape. The three gullies leading to the midsection are still snow-covered, but after more 80-degree days, that should change. Do be careful, as there were plenty of places on the mid-section where use of an ice axe prevented us from going through thin snow. Once you get to the lower bowl below the basin it's *straight* up. Snow was in reasonably good shape in the morning, which made for easy stepping. The basin was just fabulous, and after lunch, we decided to go to Foggy Pass, as opposed to Del Campo Peak. You can go high and traverse, or go low and then grind straight up. I recommend low and up. The view from Foggy Pass was spectacular (as were all the views, really). Fun glissade back to Gothic Basin, and then a fairly treacherous glissade down to the midsection of the trail--it's very steep and the snow was soft, which resulted in me getting to know a tree rather quickly and intimately...my forearm has a groove now that exactly fits the adze end of the ice axe :^) A great day. About the only thing I'd do differently was start it about 3 hours earlier (i.e. 7am) to beat the heat. Pics of the hike at http://sigcon.com/keven/ click on ""Gothic Basin.""