My girlfriend Lisa was in town from London visiting her folks for a month. We stole away for a few days to catch up and spend 3 days in nature. Lisa’s pick was Royal Basin in the Olympic Mountains. Thanks to COVID, I was able to get us permits to camp in the upper basin.
Our trip started with a hike up Royal Creek on nice trails.
Before long, we found ourselves at Royal Lake
After spending an hour visiting with the ranger, we headed up to the upper basin. Along the way, we got great views of Royal Basin.
We spent the evening drinking margaritas and catching up. We woke to blue skies.
I love camping next to Blue Lake. It has wonderful views of Mt Clark.
I walked around the upper basin enjoying the morning light.
When I returned to camp, Lisa was up and so were the mosquitos. Good thing Lisa’s dad had given her his mosquito netting pants.
Our original plan was to spend the day climbing Mt Deception but after listening to rock fall the night before, we went to Plan B. Climb up to Royal Pass and explore Deception Basin. The climb up to the pass turned out to be a combination of really lose scree and residual snow patches.
When we reached Royal Pass, we were treated to a beautiful view of Mt Mystery.
We began to drop into Deception Basin but after about 20 minutes, we decided to head back up toward Royal Peak and have lunch.
We decided to head back to Upper Royal Basin.
We spent the afternoon hanging out the lake drinking margaritas and eating queso dip.
We had dinner in the heather and played cards until bed. Not my typical mountain trip.
We woke to rain so we decided to hang out in our tents a little longer. We did as much packing as possible from our tents. Finally, we were going to have to face the rain. Then the rain stopped. We quickly packed up our tents and headed out of the basin.
The temps had dropped over night and the rain kept coming and going so we didn’t take any long breaks. When we hit the parking lot, the rain had settled in and stayed until I reached home.
What a great way to catchup with an old friend.