Royal Basin
Jess fell asleep a few moments after we settled into our sleeping bags. We said good night, she turned onto her side, went very still, and then I heard the rhythm of her breath slow. I, on the other hand, tossed and turned for most of the night, caught in a classic camping dilemma: to breath fresh air or to be eaten alive by mosquitoes. I spent most of the night submerged inside my sleeping bag trying to escape the merciless beasts, but eventually would have to resurface for a few moments to escape my stuffy sleeping bag.
The mosquitoes had been biting all evening, as we watched the sunset, and as I snapped through rolls of film. I hadn’t considered bugs at all while packing for this trip, yes it was mid summer, I don’t know what I was thinking, and so they easily found their way through my thin summery layers and porous green puffy. At some point I surrendered to them, finding refuge in curiosity: why at just over 5,000 ft on this rocky peak were there so many mosquitos? What did they eat up here, besides the temporary feast of us for one night. Why not go back to the lake? I asked them several times.
We decided to sleep out despite the mosquitos, to bivy under the stars because it was the romantic thing to do but also because my single layer, carbon fiber Zpacks tent doesn’t offer sky views once pitched. Sleeping out meant we could watch the night sky: the sunset, moon rise, constellations slowly turn across the globe. Even if the mosquitoes hadn’t been harassing me, I find it hard to fall asleep when the opportunity to lay down and watch the sky, instead of a ceiling, presents itself. I also couldn’t get comfortable, the night air never turned crisp as I thought it might and so I was slightly too warm wrapped in down and wool. At one point, I pushed out of the depths of my bag for fresh air to find a gigantic deep yellow moon creeping over the eastern horizon. I would sleep tomorrow night and bites, even in their hundreds, are only temporary.
Sunrise, called Jess.
It felt like only moments before that I had finally dropped off to sleep, but sunrise was more important. I forced myself up out of my now cozy sleeping bag and up to the true summit of North Petunia Peak. The sun was already up, we had missed its rising, but the sky was still soft and we watched the first day light creep across the peaks. The deep valleys on either side of the ridge range with bird song, chiming in the new day.
In the photograph above Jess is looking east and in the very far right of the photograph you can see the silhouette of Tahoma (Mt. Rainier). All the mountains were out, from Koma Kulshan (Mt.Baker) neighboring the Canadian border to Tahoma and several volcanos scattered between Seattle and Portland. It was not the first time I had seen this view from the Olympics, but each and every time it is stunning.
Jess stayed to watch the sunrise for a little while before heading back to her sleeping bag for a morning nap, but I was too jazzed and the light was too good to go back to sleep. I tried to take in every subtle shift in the morning light, enjoying the stillness and solitude, for in a short while we could be navigating down a tedious scree field.
I had wandered back down to the false summit and was taking pictures, when I heard a rock fall. It bounced several times and then went still.
I went still too, with the thought that something might have dislodged that rock, animal or human I wondered. My ears strained, almost tingling with effort as if they were a pair of tiny satellite dishes. After a few moments I heard something, the beat of something big beginning to move again, navigating across the rocks, and then I saw it, a large deer. Better a deer than a mountain lion. Standing on the false summit, I was very obvious but the deer took no notice of me. I watched it switch back and forth up the scree, and quickly realized it was heading for the saddle between the false and true summit, our bivy spot where jess was still curled up in her sleeping bag.
The deer crested the saddle and paused, checking out our nest of gear and sleeping bags. It seemed unfazed but gave our bivy a wide birth and continued walking by. Then all of a sudden, as if it smelled me or finally heard me, it stopped moving and looked straight at me. We stared at each other for a few moments and then the deer bounded away, leaping a few times and then trotted down the ridge towards Goat Lake.
A deer maybe isn’t the most exciting animal sighting, but it was amazing to see one traveling from one valley to another. It must have come from Royal Basin and was traveling east to Goat Lake, the opposite way we were heading, and I felt the deer was a good omen for our pending scramble into Royal Basin. The deer meant that there was indeed a way down, we just had to find it.
The scramble down took nearly three tedious hours of finding secure foot placements. We crossed scree of every size: car sized boulders we clambered over, medium sized rocks that worked every stabilizing muscle and tiny gravel that moved with every step, threatening to send us tumbling down the mountain side.
The footwork was challenging and so was the navigating. Every gain downhill shifted our perspectives. Areas that had looked like the tamer option turned out to be steeper than we anticipated, or ended in cliffs that forced us to redirect. However, we remained a solid team and the way down was so engaging that time flew by. Eventually the scree transitioned into thick vegetation, sending us bushwhacking and following game trails.
Bushwhacking lead us to the final obstacle, a river crossing. Just forty feet away, on the other side of the river, was the trail leading to and from Royal Lake. I stood at the edge of the river looking for a place to cross but the water was moving too quickly and the color of the water suggested it was deep, at least waist deep. I was down for wet feet, but I hoped there was a better place to cross.
The vegetation was so thick along the river it was hard to move. By chance we headed down river and only twenty feet away found a pair of downed trees offering safe passage across the river. I went first and was ecstatic to find the bridge stable. Once other the other side I ripped through a final section of bushes, now so scratched and bruised from bushwhacking I didn’t care to be delicate, and arrived in a huge grassy clearing with a beautiful trail edged through the meadow. A trail is a beautiful thing after hours of forging your way.
The trail lead us to Royal lake, the first and largest lake along the trail that travels through Royal Basin. We stopped there for a swim and quick snack. It had to be quick because the bugs along the lake were terrible, taking away slightly from any lake-side relaxing. But after such a tedious morning of scrambling it was refreshing to swim and refuel before continuing on.
The trail leads from Royal Lake, past many campsites, a rangers’ shelter, a huge boulder that might offer some cool climbing, and then heads farther up the valley. We passed by a beautiful alpine meadow where I’m sure on a different day black bears come to graze and sunbathe. Then the trail traced along two beautiful rivers before delivering us to the upper lake.
This upper lake, located at the base of Deception Peak, is pristine. A trail leads around the lake and cuts through a carpet of tiny alpine flowers and varieties of moss. We followed the trail around the lake to find several milky tarns at the far edge.
The only problem was that we couldn’t linger to enjoy any of this fairy tail landscape. A ruthless congregation of bugs patrolled the shores of these waterways, making even the brief pause to take these photographs a challenge. My fingers gripping the camera were covered in mosquitoes, flies and other winged critters who bit relentlessly. After one complete circumnavigation of the lake, we had to leave.
I hope to come back here one day, perhaps in spring or fall to avoid the terrible bugs, but most of all, to journey up and over into the valley beyond. Behind Deception peak is another basin, where rumor has it a final shard of glacier remains. This sliver of ice once filled the whole basin, snaking down the side of a mountain called Mystery. I would like to traverse up and over this ridge, the one in the photograph above, and pay homage to the end of a glacier, one of so many in this age of melting ice.
This weekend trip ended with a eight mile hike out, from the upper lake back to the parking lot. We made it back to the car by three, had a quick snack and then set off down the winding road to rejoin civilization. A beer at the Pourhouse in Port Townsend sounded so good, but it’s always bitter sweet leaving the mountains.