Trip: Petunia Peak + Ridge - NE Gullies via Goat Lake and out Royal Basin
Date: 10/12/2007
Trip Report:I met up with my good friend and long time partner Brendan last thursday night to pack up for what we figured would be the usual wet and cold late season Olympics trip. As Brendan made some silly choice to live in Pittsburgh now, I don't get to drag him out there much so i was hoping it might not be too dreary.
We opted for a later start to deal with his rental car, etc and ended up at the Dungeness TH at 1:00PM on Friday and began the nice pleasant hike in to Camp Handy. In no time at all we were chilling and snacking at the shelter. We then made the river crossing, where I got my foot damp, and then had no trouble finding the Goat Lake way trail. It was steep for a while, but pretty easy to follow, we finally got up to the lake a little after 5.
I hadn't been up to Goat Lake since I was a wee little boy scout so it was pretty cool to see it again. Truly beautiful. Some minor stove shenanigans delayed but didn't cancel dinner, then we crawled into the tent under a night full of stars. I wanted to try out my new Aarn pack which is only 30L so I took the summer bag. I was chilly, but morning was so beautiful I nearly forgot. The sun hit us early and we were soon in shorts anywaysl with a clear blue sky all around.
We headed up a scree slope to the top of the ridge N of Goat Lake, hit the high point on the end, then traversed all the way around to the base of Petunia Peak (which also seems to be known as Goat Lake Citadel). We pretty much missed the easy standard route and ended up dropping off the east side of the ridge and following a loose gully up with some 4th class scrambling at the top. A fun route but not really recommended due to the usual loose rock. Views of the Needles and everywhere else from the summit were outstanding. It was fun to look across to the Baldy-Graywolf-Walkinshaw ridge route I had done a few years ago.
We found a route down from Petunia on the east side and traversed under the lower gendarmes. The Climbers Guide lists a technical traverse, but we were determined to go light and leave the ropes behind this time. We regained the ridge and spent the rest of the day scrambling along. We had hoped to get to the summit of Fricaba but ran out of time since we wanted to have a nice leisurely time setting up camp and enjoying the area instead of descending by headlamp. We hit the high point right before the intersections of the Petunia-Fricaba Ridge and the Deception-Fricaba Ridge and then headed down towards Upper Royal Basin and camped on a pleasant bench.
The night was a bit warmer, but still almost entirely clear. We work up, broke camp, and then spent the rest of the morning exploring the upper basin, picking out fun looking lines on Deception and the rest of the Needles, and then picked our way down to Royal lake and had a leisurely stroll back out.
In all a really awesome ridge hike with the most spectacular weather day up high I've ever had in October in the Olympics. It was a great trip with a great partner. I'm definitely psyched to head back in there and hit some spring hardpack on Deception and do some fun Olympics Rock.
Brendan put some pictures from both our cameras
here. The rest of my pictures are
here.
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