Gothic Basin — Saturday, Jul. 3, 2004

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

The trail to Gothic Basin is in very good condition for this time of year. There are a couple of trees to scramble under but they are no big deal. There's still some snow in the upper gulleys but only one of them presents any difficulty at all. An ice ax was useful but i suspect by next weekend you will be able to make it all the way across without any problem. The basin however is still in deep snow right from the beginning and the lower tarns and Foggy Lake are still frozen. The walking was easy as the snow is very consolidated. We headed up past Foggy Lake as we intended to climb Del Campo. It turned out to be a very easy climb as we ascended snow and occasional trail all the way to the upper gap. At that point it's a class 3 rock scramble to the summit. Very easy and fun. The downside was as soon as we got into the basin it was socked in with clouds and we hardly saw a thing the entire time we were up there.