[Gary-n-Jan]

On 8/29/09, Jan and I and our friend Claudia made a day trip up through the Milk Creek drainage, exiting via Royal Basin. I was delayed in posting this because the camera we had with us took a fatal fall from just below the ridge south of Petunia Peak. It is resting peacefully somewhere in the Milk Creek Basin. The pictures in this post are from our recent trip into Deception Basin. We followed the Dungeness River Trail to just past Camp Handy. Shortly after Camp Handy is the junction with the Heather Creek trail. This lead us to a large meadow on the Dungeness with several well established camp sites. We poked around upstream through the meadow until we found a good place to cross the river. This is where we made significant route finding error. There is an old way trail on the north side of Milk Creek that climbs through the forested section up into the open alpine basin. Hunters used this to access a couple camps at higher elevations. Where we crossed the river put us on the south side of Milk Creek. As we began climbing, the terrain opened up, and although the grade was steep, the travel was easy. At about elev 4,000 ft, we could start to see the ridge lines above us and it became clear we were on the wrong side of the creek. We elected to see if we could do a side hill traverse around the ridge and intersect the creek without loosing too much elevation. Although the terrain was fairly steep, the forest was mostly small trees with minimal underbrush, so travel was not too difficult. As we came around the ridge to the west, we could see a reasonable path to the creek at our elevation and the terrain on the other side looked much friendlier. We had to negotiate some pockets of Slide Alder on both sides of Milk Creek and a couple of angry Yellow Jacket nests (Jan, 2 stings, Claudia, 1). Once we got away from the creek, the terrain opened up into massive fern fields and open meadows. We made an ascending traverse along the shoulder of Petunia Peak. By this time it was mid afternoon and we need to figure out an exit plan. Surveying the ridge above us, we located two possible routes to take us up and over it into Royal Basin. As we climbed the ever steepening scree slope, it became clear the surest route was to a col south of Petunia Peak. Near the upper part of this route, we followed a rock band that contained some of the largest and clearest quartz crystals we have seen anywhere in the Olympics. It was an unexpected surprise! After crossing the ridge, we descended steep scree slopes to a large talus field that lead us to the lower meadow of Royal Basin. We arrived at the Dungeness trailhead at 8:00 PM, 12 hours after our day had started. Here is a map and a few images. Gary and Jan

Our actual route is indicated by the red track. The route we should have followed in lower Milk Creek is indicated by the yellow dotted line

Our route up to the ridge separating the Milk Creek Drainage from Royal Basin. Petunia Peak is the prominent peak behind our route.

Looking back at the eastern portion of upper Milk Creek Basin from the Ridge before descending down into Royal Basin.

Our route down from the ridge into Royal Basin. This was steep scree on the upper slopes and talus on the lower slopes. We crossed Royal Creek just above the lower meadow.