The royal/deception basin super-epic tour. olympic mountains WA

[Zeedashbo]

Date colon 4-20-07

Place colon royal basin, deception basin surrounded by nice alpine peaks including mt. deception (the second highest mountain in the olympics), and mt. mystery.

Participants colon Lani, zeedashbo, and lani's friend dave


The lowdown colon


After seeing an amazing trip report from Lani a few days earlier from a land not often traveled called the olympics, i received a call. Lani wanted more, and when he wants more, he can be quite coercive. I made the 'sure, why not' decision in my head and decided to skip work on friday. We met at dantes at 9pm and promptly left seattle with a nice beer buzz and a little sleep at 3 a.m. Through a blur of winding roads, a narrows bridge, a private road poop stop, and copious amounts of caffeine we arrived at the dungeness river.

We set off at dawn with cool temperatures and a brisk pace. everything was kind of fuzzy. it was a holiday after all.



in what seemd like no time i was hiking in a foot of powder in tennis shoes


but the views of impending deepness were spectacular






after about 7 miles of hiking (5 walking, 2 skinning) we arrived in the royal (with cheese) basin.




what could be a nice winter descent



the farther up the basin we got, the more awesome got the views.




Lani and Dave checking out mt. deception. "check out what i skied last week"


the needles, time to get extreme.....some other time


we hit the saddle on the east side of deception and got a glimpse of mt. mystery and some redonkulous stuff that is soooooo far away from any sort of trail or civilization that it's not that funny. (at this point, my ISO setting went to 80 and a bunch of my pics turned out uber crappy).


then we skied into deception basin. lani getting some nice south facing corn.


dave enjoying the same


after around 800 vert of skiing we skinned up to the east saddle of mt. mystery as the clouds started closing in on us. looking back at the south face of mt. deception. super nice closeout lines.



upon reaching the saddle i was beat down like a red headed step child. i really wanted to ski some pow, and the south/east face of mystery was not pow. so i let lani and dave head off to get the last 1,000 feet of gnar that is mystery and i set my sights on hal-foss peak which was 600 feet lower, but still over 7,000 feet and looked pretty damn powdery for a nice bit of vert. but it was not to be. as i climbed the first few hundred feet on the ridge it started to snow, and i couldn't even see lani and dave on the peak next to me. so i put on my longboard day sweater and waited for the crew to meet
me back at the saddle. i heard them scrape their way down the face in vertigo conditions (these guys have gigantic huevos) and i skied a few pow turns down to them.

with the conditions going shitty fast, we did what seemed right. we skied pow.

me


dave


and headed back to the royal (with cheese) basin to ski more north facing vertigo pow.


lani with the needles in the background


z-bo doing the hippy pow thing.


but i had to schmear it out for my polish devil brotha from anotha mutha


lani promotes his ski siccness



then we had to try our figure eights.




we made it back to the car around 9 p.m. (lani around 8colon30, i think he was running so he didn't have to use his headlamp). it was definitely the longest day i've ever had hiking or skiing (a little less than a marathon) but definitely worth it. i'll be back soon. maybe with a tent and a huge trough of high pressure surrounding me.


gear notes colon Skis, skins, crampons (didn't use), ice ax (didn't use), a little water (free refills the whole way up) and a wet pair of tennis shoes.

[Phill]

Nice man.

"little less than a marathon" - ouch.

[skier666]

Its pierogi time bitch!

[Squirrel99]

Stupendous! Monumental! Awesome! Coolness.
or whatever. nice play

[Arty50]

Well comma all I have to say is open-quote This trip report rocked exclamation point close-quote

[ptavv]

I believe your post should have been made completely without punctuation period I mean if you are going to go this far comma you may as well go all the way period That-apostrophe-s what I-apostrophe-d do anyway period new-line new-line Very nice work though exclaimation mark

[skiandbike]

Olympics are looking good ellipsis

[Mofro261]

And that is the "easy access" to the Olympics?

Looks like an epic day of radness, even with the weather closing in.

[corn dog]

Nice. I hiked in there one spring, shit, maybe ten years ago now, and didn't even find mt deception in the fog. We wandered a ways up some other hill, and figured that had something to do with why Deception was so named. Time to go find Lani's earlier TR.

[bcrider]

Z-bo getting it done.

Holy F if this doesnt look like a nice playground.

[Squirrel99]

Z-bo getting it done.

Holy F if this doesnt look like a nice playground.

Just imagining a nice splitboard track from the upper right to the lower left of the photo, eh? me too (except I'm envisioning a ski track )

[philfort]

Time to go find Lani's earlier TR.

Here is the video from said trip...

[Buster Highmen]

Sphinctorial!

[corn dog]

Here is the video from said trip...

nice job. What a great place.

[powdherb]

Excellent work. Good to see people getting out int he Raw shit.

[powstash]

this TR is not getting the play it deserves. HOLY SMOKES Z BO!!! YOU BROUGHT THE A GAME WITH THIS ONE! WOW! Lani, you are one bad mofo. I mean that in a good way. I am stunned with lines to ski from those photos.

14'er threads got nothing on this one. (no disrespect for the current Colorado slay fest) I think a couple of these will sum things up

One thing though - how you got out of the house without the rodent on this one is surprising. was he chained to a desk?

[BenWA]

The best part about this TR is zbo's sweater.

[Lani]

Good show, Z. I was getting impatient to see some pics. Too bad that the vis went to shit. Don't blame you for not investigating the Mystery. I'm still slightly miffed that I didn't get the last 20' to the summit 'cuz of the 'schrund and death-slurpee, but c'est la vie.

For those who want more Royalties: Mt Deception

We'll get the rodent away from his TPS reports one of these days.

[Squirrel99]

One thing though - how you got out of the house without the rodent on this one is surprising. was he chained to a desk?

weekdays

[Mofro261]

Here is the video from said trip...

That vid was so cool that I had to watch it in reverse.


Z-bo, so how and when did you bust your dynafits, because the ski pics look great.

[goldenboy]

Nice, looks like a place you could hang out during an extended high pressure and bag lines all day.

[Moss-Back]

Nice work boys.
I packed in there a long time ago. That is remote, beautiful terrain.

PNW TR's like this are accelerating my BC-gear acquisition plan...I've had enough of 'watching from the sideline.'

[cascadianwarrior]

PNW TR's like this are accelerating my BC-gear acquisition plan...I've had enough of 'watching from the sideline.'

I fully agree. Out of each commission check I'm stashing away $100 toward my splitboard fund. I'll just let the slowshoes gather dust next season.

Way to get the goods in a very inaccessable area!

[facedeep]

Nice Pics. It's been a while since i have been out to the olys. Thank you for reminding me of the goodness i have been missing.

[shmerham]

I've been curious about the terrain in the Olympics for skiing.

The slogfest was expected, the sweetness far exceeds expectations.