So...Mount Olympus. With a shrinking weather windo (ie, sucker hole) we decided to go for it...Aaron, Ty and myself...
We left Seattle around 6pm on Thursday, caught the ferry from Edmonds to the Peninsula and drove to the Hoh Rainforest...also the trailhead to Olympus. After a late arrival at the trailhead, we crashed for a few hours, then woke around 5:30 am to get started. Soon we discovered that we could not register for a campsite until the visitors center opened at 9am...so we took a nap and waited. Finally, at 9:30 am we hit the trail.
Day one consisted of a long hike...15.1 miles...to Elk Lake (2600 ft elevation). It took us about 6.5 hours at a nice easy pace. We set up camp, ate, and crashed around 8pm to get ready for an alpine start...
The alarm clock woke us at 2:10 am...which sucks. We warmed up, ate, did some last minute packing and hit the trail at 3:15 am. The first 2.3 miles gained 1600 ft and took us to Glacier Meadows (4200 ft.) where we registered to climb. Then another mile took us to the Blue Glacier at 5000 ft. Here we geared up (crampons, ropes, helmets, ice axes, etc.). We started up the Blue Glacier around 6 am...just as the sun was rising. From the Blue Glacier we proceeded to climb to the top of Snow Dome at 6600 ft. As we were cresting snow dome we saw a bear running off in the distance on the snow and came across its tracks a bit later. From Snow Dome we proceeded through Crystal Pass (7200 ft.) to the upper Blue Glacier and to the summit block. Being late season, the summit was surrounded by a scary, deep moat and the snow bridges to the rock were sketchy at best. When we finally made it to the rock, 3 pitches of chossy 4th class brought us to the summit (7969 ft.)around 11 am...about 8 hours after leaving camp.
We hung out on the summit for a few minutes, then 3 rappels took us back to the snow. Then we reversed the route back to Elk Lake and our camp...which we reached around 6pm. We decided to hike part of the way out and made it 6 miles to the Olympic Guard Station around 9pm. Totals for the day: 20 miles, 5300 ft ascent, 7000 ft descent.
We knew there was a good chance that we'd get rain on Sunday and mother nature did not let us down. The last 9 miles out were as much swimming as hiking. Finally, at 11am we were back to the car. 45 miles in 49.5 hours and we were beat...
No comments:
Post a Comment