Royal blood

I guess skiing in Royal Basin runs in the family... my brother went in there less than a month before I moved here. Found on an old Mountaineers trip reports board, for May 1997:

Saturday, May 24 - Monday, May 26 - Royal/Deception Basins, Olympics backcountry(M2+) Six of us made the 7 mile trek to enjoy the seldom-skied slopes of Royal and Deception Basins in the Olympic Peninsula. The first 5 miles were on dirt, which made for some heavy packs. We set up base camp in Royal Basin, near the base of Mount Deception.
On Sunday we climbed up to the notch on the East side of Deception, and dropped down into Deception Basin. The South side of the notch involved a little scrambling over scree to get to snow covered slopes. From the bottom we headed South up to yet another notch on the East side of Mount Mystery. We played around in here for a while on excellent snow, getting some steep runs off the headwalls on the East side of the valley. After this we wrapped around the East side of the basin and climbed up Hal Foss Peak (the summit registry showed we were the first ascent of the year). We had a great descent back down to the basin. Near the bottom, the snow got much heavier, and we triggered several large slow-moving slides. One of our party, Johnny, had a nice ride on one of the slides that was a little sobering. We headed back the same way we came in.
Monday we just did a half-day, and headed Westwards through a small glacier valley to a notch in the Needles that gave a great view of more mountain ranges. There was a good-sized snow lip at the top, and we took a bunch of pictures of various members of our party launching off of it.
In general, the snow is still not that stable in this area, especially in the afternoon after the sun's been on it. A solo climber attempting to climb the Honeymoon Chute up Mount Deception early Sunday morning, abandoned his climb after digging a pit and finding a very weak layer 2.5 feet down. We saw the aftermath of a huge slab avalanche that had broken loose on the lower slopes of Mt. Fricaba, and had probably happened just before we arrived. The crown extended several hundred yards, and was probably at least 15 feet high in some places. The run out was about a half-mile in length. (Marc Fortier)