Gothic Peak (July 22 2012)

After a sunny Saturday spent rafting down the Sauk river with coworkers, we had decided to scramble Gothic Peak in the same area as the rafting trip on Sunday.


View 120722 - Gothic Peak scramble in a larger map

Our climbing friends John, Ed, Ed's daughter Margaret and Gretchen wanted to join, so we met everyone on Saturday evening at the Barlow Pass trailhead for a trailhead bivy/camp. John had brought along a nice fire pit, a lot of firewood, and chairs. This spelled a great evening of grilling food, talking and just being by the fire.
Sunday morning came with Ed trying to wake us up way too early. We finally did get up at 5:45, and were ready to take off at about 6:30 after having some oatmeal and delicious coffee (coffee care of John).

A quick hike a short mile along the Monte Cristo road took us to the Weden Creek trail, which then rather steeply takes you up the hill another few miles towards Gothic Basin. Once we hit snow, we started having some route finding issues. We traversed too far to the left, without noticing the trail which switchbacked back up to the right. This left us at the bottom of a short but wet third class section, which worked out ok to scramble up. This led us up more snow slopes and finally up to Gothic Lake and views of our peak.

Peaks coming out of the clouds	A lot of nice streams long the way
Melting snow field.	First view of Gothic Peak to the left

We traversed counter clockwise around the lake and up towards the south ridge of the summit of Gothic Peak. A quick 2-3 class scramble had us on top around 12:30 - six hours after we started in the morning.

Susan scrambling up the summit block	Lunch time on the summit
Looking down the steep side of the peak	Golden Fleabane and Cliff Penstemon on the summit.

We hung about at the summit eating lunch, napping and enjoying the weather which despite the mediocre forecast stayed dry and offered views of the surrounding peaks with a good cloud show. On the way down we had some signature Ed/John party separations and route finding issues. At one point Ed took off with Margaret and Gretchen to the right, while John took off to the left, while Susan and I stayed somewhere in the middle, separating the party into no less than 3 different groups. After 30 minutes and some "where is everyone" drama involving a "ED->" sign constructed from sticks, we are all back together at the trail.  I call that situation normal

Enormous morel like mushroom.

Another few hours of hiking down the trail, and we are again back at the cars at a very civilized hour of the day.