May 29-31 Olympic National Park, Seven Lakes Basin

We headed up the Sol Duc on Friday evening. Our plan was to camp at Deer Lake (elev 3,500') on Friday and Saturday nights, tour into Seven Lakes Basin on Saturday and then ski some of the slopes above Deer Lake Sunday morning before returning home. The trail up to Deer Lake was virtually snow free. We finally hit continuous snow a little below the lake. There was still about 2 feet of snow on the ground at the Lake. Upon arrival at the lake, we found that the rangers had recently set up their summer tent, so we took advantage of the very comfortable accommodations.
On Saturday, we headed to Seven Lakes Basin. The route from Deer Lake is southeast. We climbed a drainage that leads to a col above Round Lake, the western most lake in the basin. This route gains 1,300' of elevation and avoids the side hills around Bogachiel Peak. It also concludes in a 500 vf decent down a 40 degree slope into the basin. Once in the basin, we toured east past Lunch Lake and No Name Lake. All of the lakes were completely frozen over and there was still several feet of snow covering the ground in the basin. We now headed south and climbed the ridge to the High Divide. The views of Olympus, the Hoh River Valley and the Bailey Range were stunning. There were several bear tracks through the basin and along the divide. One of the bears must have been a skier in a former life, he set a perfect track for us to follow all the way to the ridge above Heart Lake. Our original plan was to ski down to Heart Lake before turning around. Although the ski down looked inviting, the thought of post holing back up 500 ft was not, so we decided to ski a line back down into the basin instead and then start touring back in the direction of Bogachiel Peak. We climbed to near the summit, the long flat corniced ridge leading to the summit did not gain us any additional elevation, so we dropped back into the basin and toured back to Round Lake. Thankfully, the climb back up to the saddle was in the shade and the snow had firmed up enough that we only broke through the crust occasionally. From the saddle, we were able to ski almost the entire way back to Deer Lake through a large bowl and open trees. We got back to the Lake at about 8:30 PM.
On Sunday, given the less than perfect snow conditions for turning, we decided to forgo our original plan and headed back down the trail in mid morning.


Gary and Jan