Beware, it's places like this that get people totally addicted to hiking: epic views, perfect crystal lakes and tarns, alpine meadows.

My hike today was up to Foggy Lake and a circle back around to some of the tarns on the way back down.

From the trail reports and the description, I expected the hike up to be something more scrambly, but to me it didn't really feel so much like that. After crossing Weeden Creek, the first half of the elevation is steep, but smooth forest switchbacks. After you hit the waterfalls and some of the open areas halfway up, there are boulders and such to cross, but anything that might have at one point been a scramble has cut stairs (last picture). I came across an airdropped tool box and many of the rocks in the trickier parts had orange "x"s on them, so perhaps this trail work is recent? 

A couple of the waterfalls are still running and quite beautiful. A few others are mostly dry now. Wildflowers are still present, especially high up. It's pretty dry now, so there were no bugs other than the occasional fly. It was nice after the last few weeks to have a hike where you can just sit for an hour and not be bothered. 

When you reach the basin it's a pretty perfect alpine wonderland. There are plenty of trails and rocks that make it easy to stay off the meadows and fragile areas. I briefly lost the path, but then realized there were little blue flags on the main trail up to Foggy Lake. 

There were a moderate amount of people, but I had a lot of solitude. On the way back down I passed about half a dozen groups on the way up to camp, somewhat surprising for a Monday, so this place must be pretty popular on weekends. It would make an amazing overnight hike for sure.

The upper portion is treeless, so it would be wise to have sun protection. Poles were super helpful on the upper portion of the trail.

Day hike on Monday. Plenty of cars parked at the pass, but we found a spot in the official lot at 11am. Great, challenging hike with some very steep sections. Agree with the prvious report, bugs are not bad at all right now. Be warned that this hike feels and tracks quite a bit longer than the description given here. My Apple Watch workout app had it at 5.75 miles to the entrance to the basin and my wife's All Trails was showing well over 6 miles one way. We would have arrived at the trailhead earlier if we had known that we were in for a 12 mile RT day.

Warning to young female backpackers in small groups:

My sister and I backpacked up to Foggy Lake and spent the night there. The next morning, we left our tent and nonessentials behind to hike toward Gothic Peak. Going up to the peak I wore my polarized sun glasses, little snow was up there. 

We were gone for about 2 hours. When we got back to the tent, we had some downtime and decided to take a nap.


Within an hour, we both woke up with intense burning in our eyes — so bad we couldn’t even open them for more than one second at a time . We flushed them the best we could, but the pain continued. Our eyes became extremely light-sensitive, and our eyelids swelled like we’d been exposed to some kind of chemical irritant.

We ran through all possible causes. We had our bear spray with us and the safety was on and nothing else we had could have caused this. There was no smell and it only burned mucus membranes and not our skin. We contacted family through our Garmin, packed up, and struggled to hike down and out of the area.

That night, we ended up in the ER with what doctors said appeared to be a chemical irritant to our eyes. We both had iritis, conjunctivitis, and ulcers. Our vision was so bad we couldn’t make out the top lines on the eye acuity chart.

We’ve reported this to the ranger station — in case this was malicious

The trail was in excellent condition. thanks, WTA. Got here around 8:00 a.m. and started the hike was difficult with those switchbacks but we took our time and made quick work to get up to the basin. My buddy and I decided to summit all the way up to Gothic peak and it did not disappoint at all. We could see everything as the clouds opened up that afternoon. Del Campo was right over there; could almost reach out your hand and touch it, and could see Vesper peak in the distance and a chicken at the top! The Alpine Lakes Wilderness is truly stunning.

Harper and I had a lovely first visit to Gothic Basin.  The streams and waterfalls are flowing decently still and there are some small snow patches close to Foggy lake still.  I found ripe thimble berries, red and blue huckleberries, and salmon berries below 4000'.

I noticed the trail line on the Monte Cristo USGS quad sheet is placed incorrectly.  The last mile or so from where the trail turns west should not turn until further south.  The trail actually heads west at the small 5021' summit near the ponds SE of the lake.