Gothic Peak, August 22-23
I’ve been to the Monte Cristo area twice before, including my first ever overnight backpacking trip. But both of these trips were long ago in hydrologic time — this was the first time I’ve seen the washout of the Monte Cristo Road at the bridge over the North Fork Sauk. This is also the first time I’ve been there with other people, namely the usual suspect, Sketchy, and Ben and Laura (who’d just gotten married two weekends ago). The Weeden Creek Trail to Gothic Basin branches off shortly before the washout (ie. leave the Monte Cristo road before crossing the river). On the way up we decided to instead follow the “trail” on the outdated USGS map, so I got to do some unintentional swimming in the (possibly arsenic-filled) river.
After a very short bit of moss-trap bushwhacking (when you are looking at a low-elevation forest in western Washington, that is not the ground, it is a carpet of moss draped over sticks and hidden creeks), we reached the real trail. It starts out as gentle, sweeping switchbacks through the woods, but as the miles tick on it gets impatiently steep and rocky (the plentiful huckleberries and blueberries up higher are a nice consolation). As soon as we got to the notch peeking over into Gothic Basin I found out what the trail was in such a hurry to get to! From there, we wandered among the water-worn rock and calm ponds of the basin a bit further to camp by Foggy Lake (despite the crowds we passed on the trail and in the lower part of the basin, we only shared Foggy Lake with one other group). The sandstone (yes, sandstone) lumps we camped on provided excellent cooking and lounging furniture as the sun set and we settled in for a quiet night.
Foggy Lake
The next morning, Foggy Lake was definitely living up to it’s name. From camp we wandered around the lake on the sandstone slabs, a tiny bit of snow, and then started up the talus (which turned out to be the good kind, mostly staying in one spot). The final hundred feet or so to the summit is where the class 3 stuff begins, which turns out to be wide ledges stepped about at shoulder height (or waist height for a normal person). This didn’t seem to be any trouble for anyone except for a small excitable dog out on her first hiking trip.
Gothic Peak Summit
With sun on the summit and the fog hiding the green river valleys below, the views featured shades of black rock and gray fog with patches of green trees and blue sky. The neighboring peaks, including Del Campo, faded in and out as we waited for the clouds to completely blow away, but we descended before that happened.
- Gothic Peak, 6213 ft