Western Cascades

Del Campo and Gothic Peaks, Monte Cristo Range

Since I was still getting over jet lag from Europe, Jim and I decided to do a 3-day trip into Del Campo and Gothic peaks. Jim was able to work until early afternoon on Friday. We were on the trail just before 4pm and arrived Foggy Lake just before dark. We enjoyed a quite dinner at the outlet stream. The mice here are very brave.

We awoke to blue skies and had breakfast just above the lake. We had Gothic peaks on the left side of the lake ….

and Del Campo on the right side of the lake ..

After a leisurely breakfast, we headed up Del Campo. As we hiked up the rib leading to the rock, we enjoyed views of all five Gothic Peaks.

Del Campo is a really fun class 3 scramble with very stable rock. It is climbed so much, the route is very clean.

We had the summit all to ourselves and enjoyed an hour of naming.

We slowly downclimbed the summit block…

and then headed over to Gothic just as the hordes of climbers showed up.

We had to drop clear down to the lake in order to switch over to the Gothic side. We headed across the scree to make a complete loop out of our trip.

Gothic was a nice climb from this side. Lots of slabs and benches. The top was a bunch of scree but we did find this slab which gave us a break.

After scrambling the final rock pitch, we enjoyed another summit all to ourselves. This was surprising since there were so many people camped at Foggy Lake.

We headed back to camp in time to clean off in the lake and dry off in the sun. It was nice to be camped at Foggy Lake for one more night so we could have dinner while admiring the peaks we had just climbed.

The morning was uneventful. The hike out was quick and we were home before 3pm.