The Gothic Basin/Weden Creek trail is a much more pleasant hiking experience at its outset since a contractor finished re-constructing it two years ago. What was once an obstacle course of mud-holes, roots and rocks in washed out trail is now a showcase of excellent trail design. There are lots of beautiful new puncheon bridges, turnpikes, check steps and water-bars. Where the new trail construction stops, the tread reverts to its good old self - a washed out, poorly-designed miner's trail. After the first gully crossing, there's some new rock fall that has left smaller boulders and trees strewn across the trail. Looking at the cliffs above I could see the clean faces were the rock had broken away. A couple more blow-down are encountered before reaching the basin. This trail has become very popular in recent years, but in late season there were fewer people than I expected. I climbed up to the shores of Foggy Lake for lunch before heading toward Gothic peak. Even though there weren't many people in the basin on this day, many of them were headed for Gothic. Two parties were on their way down when I reached the base of the climb with one more behind me. There's a snow field still lingering on the approach, but I bypassed most of it and followed the steep, loose broken rock toward the start of the scramble. The climb itself seemed a little dicer than I remembered. It's really a short easy class 3 scramble, but there is a potential for a fatal fall. The summit register was placed in July of 1996 shortly before my last visit. I was surprised how many names I recognized. Former Boealps climbing partners and instructors Dave Steiner, Dan Georing and Steve Edgar, Mike Torok of course, a Priscilla (maybe the one that mysteriously appears and disappears in Mike's trip reports'), Viki Spring (the Viki Spring'). I also saw the names of some former trip report authors we haven't heard from for a while like Pilar and M. Goldar (I hear Pilar has a girlfriend now and doesn't climb as much), Huckleberry (and maybe Marmot) and Topographic Tom. I took a different route out avoiding the annoying broken rock fields taking instead the rock slabs high above the snow. It was such a nice day I took my time on the way out exploring some of the old digs along the way.

Gothic basin is a beautiful place. However, getting there or getting out of there was hard. We started around 10:45am on this beautiful cloudless Saturday. The first 2 miles or so was pretty flat. The trail was in good condition. The rest of the trip was ruthless steep climb; and it was just rocks all over the place. By the time we got to the basin around 2pm, it had felt like a long day already. The view on the way up was quite nice. There were also a couple of waterfalls. At the basin there were a lot to explore. For a while we got confused as to which lake was Foggy Lake. There was a lake deep down the valley that obviously wasn't. The first lake in the basin had some dirty green color. Further up there was a nice clear pond. After more scrambing up on the rocks, we got to the largest lake, clear and very pretty, probably the Foggy Lake. A lot of people were setting up tents to camp. We didn't have much energy to scramble the peaks near the lake. We left around 4pm and had a difficult time going down also. When we reached the parking lot around 7:15pm, it was quite dark and our legs were about to quit.

Good hike. The lower portion of the trail is in excellent condition; the upper reaches have the obligatory mangled mess of mudholes and a few blowdown that are easy for one to hitch ones butt up and over or around. With the rocky, bouldery terrain, there isn't much the FS can do to this part of the trail. Beautiful views at the top, and very well worth the steep hike and clambering over rocks to get there! There is easy scambling on the mountains and boulders surrounding the pretty basin. The blueberries are out. However, as of this writing, all the ripe ones are nestled in Janet's and Laura's tummies. Hiking behind these two foxy, graceful, foraging tapirs, Dierdre and I entered the basin starving and ill from lack of fruit in our diet, dreaming of blueberries we may someday find on this vast planet. But fear not! This coming weekend, the not-so-ripe ones that they did leave on the millions of bushes will be ripe for the picking.....

A beautiful sunny mid-week day found my nephew and I on this trail for the first time in a couple of years. It was a welcome surprise to find the first half, that was previously overgrown and dificult to follow, now totally reworked and great lengths of it relocated; complete with some elevated tread, boardwalks, and my personal favorite - the concrete and river rock toadstools installed for the first creek crossing. Very cool! (Greg's construction genius again') Of course it still gains the same brutal elevaton in precious few miles. On the upper portion of the trail, two of the waterfall crossings are blocked by snow and avalanche debris. Folks have been walking across the snow to reach the trail on the far side, but the snow cave beneath is growing larger as the roof grows thinner making this method of gaining the other side increasingly dangerous. We opted to play it safe and go around; a bit of a scramble but worth it. Other than these, the trail is snow free into the basin. Gothic Basin itself still has plenty of large snow fields throughout which we enjoyed glissading down after summiting Gothic Peak. The small lake first encountered is only half clear, and Foggy Lake open only enough to tantalize hikers with suggestive hints of it's lusterous cobalt blue depths. A definate thumbs up! Tally-ho!

Gothic Basin is a starkly beautiful place that reminds me of the upper Enchantment Basin. The new tread along the first 1 ½ miles of trail is a welcome improvement. Ski poles were helpful when traversing the steep snow bridge at the first avalanche gully. The trail gets progressively steeper and rockier as it approaches the basin. The basin is still mostly covered with snow. Beautiful frozen Foggy Lake is right at the base of Del Campo Peak and it is most easily reached by walking on the bare rock outcropping straight up the center of the valley. The side trip up to Gothic Peak is well worth the effort. To get there turn left as soon as you reach the Foggy Lake outlet and ascend the steep snow field to a pass. From the pass head South up another snow field then along an easy ridge trail. The final 100 yards is a moderately easy but exposed scramble. If you’re not up for a scramble the view from the ridge just below the peak is almost equally excellent. Much of the decent back down to the trail can be glissaded. Bugs were moderately annoying but once I threw on the bug suit I became almost oblivious to them. Round trip to the peak is about 11mi and 3900ft.