Trail is snow free to approximately 4,500' except for the first two water falls. Watch for undercut snow at these crossings. Third water fall is melted out. Lots of hard but managable snow at the basin. Trail is in beautiful shape down low.

WOOHOO! What a beautiful day! Saturday spent in the suburbs proved too painful for us, so we fled to the hills on Sunday. We persevered through depressing cloud in the Seattle area, and were rewarded with great sunshine by the time we got to Barlow Pass. The trail is very well described in the Glacier Peak 100 Hikes book. In particular, they're not kidding when they mention steepness starting shortly after the trail leaves the Monte Cristo Road. The grade is brutal - but the views are worth it. First views appear (of Silvertip Peak) at about 1.5 miles from the MC road. This is where you have to cross the 3 streams running in gorges. This weekend there is still snow in all three. The first has melted out enough to be quite intimidating - big ice caves forming which of course aren't visible from above. No problems crossing this weekend, but be careful as the week goes by. Ditto for stream #2, much less melted out. At stream #3 it's best to go drop off the trail a bit and and cross where it has melted through - the rest is quite undercut. We did watch a couple cross it who didn't seem to be bothered by snow bridges - she nearly slid off the end. I""m glad she didn't, but it was entertainment. From here, it's probably half a mile or so of up (again pretty steep - very rough) to a huge and extremely beautiful waterfall - guess this must be what the book calls ""King Kong's Shower Bath"". The views from here are very rewarding - you can see Sheepgap Mtn, Weden Creek and Silvertip, and back to what I suppose is the Monte Cristo group. We continued about 1/4 mile on - here the trail goes quite vertical - lots of hands on scrambling. This is also where the snow starts. We _did_ have ice axes, but also dogs on leashes, so we turned around, went back to the shower bath and enjoyed the view. Looked at the map and discovered that we were probably 1/4 mile from meadows. Makes me itch - we'll be back next week. We saw about 8 people on the trail, and 4 or 5 climbers/boarders returning from the basin. Flowers were out around the 3 creeks - columbine, heather. This is a great time of year to do this hike. Just watch out for snow bridges and snow near the basin lip.

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.

It was raining in Seattle, it was raining in Bellevue, it was raining in Everett, it was raining in Granite Falls, it was raining at Barlow Pass. It was raining everywhere except the Monte Christo Road and Gothic Basin Trail, which were beautiful and dry with high clouds and great views. (Okay, so I'm gloating about the weather.) This is a nice hike. Even the road walk is pretty. The lower trail is muddy in spots, but not bad. We hit snow starting at 3500 ft. and the snow was about 2 feet deep by the time we got to Gothic Basin. The trail was easy to follow under the snow; it's a continuous rising south traverse, when in doubt head that way. It was great to be out on snow again. Yay snowshoeing season!

I'm somewhat addicted to this hike, so invited afriend to go explore some mines in the area. We gotlucky and found one, but the bushwack to get thereis only for the true mine afficiando! The newly-built trail for the first half is holdingup ok to the rains (did I mention it rained all day'). Someis going to wash away, but most sections look ok.Once past 3700', the old trail takes over, and itis under either 2"" of snow or 2"" of water. Snow starts in earnest at 4000' el. Naturally,we got totally soaked. I think my boots weigh 45 lbs eachPerhaps it's time to waterproof again'