Climbing Mt. Olympus

Four Part Series - Part 2

Day 2

Our day began with a 6 am wakeup call from Craig, we woke and had an awesome set of breakfast burritos. We broke down camp and separated out the heavy gear we'd need for high camp, all of the large tents, chairs and large gear stayed at Lewis Meadows. The mules once again carried the gear, this time though they would only accompany us half way up to Elk Lake, beyond Elk Lake the trail gets narrow and mules can't pass. The section of the trail just east of Lewis Meadows continues with the series of huge trees, these are quickly left behind as the trail begins to climb towards Elk Lake. Just prior to the lake the trail turns south and crosses the Hoh River, which at this point cuts a deep narrow gorge through the rock. The High Hoh bridge crosses this 140+ foot chasm.

At Elk Lake we rested in the trees above the lake (we never ventured down to the lake itself) for a bit waiting for Glenn, Al and the mules to catch us. Who should come walking down the trail but one of my Flickr contacts, Chris : cpkpdx, we'd run across each other posting photos of mountaineering. We'd discovered we were both going to be heading up to Olympus around the same time, he'd be coming out at around the time I was going up. It was great meeting him in person, glad to hear he'd summited and I felt bad he had a 15 mile full pack journey ahead of him back to the car. After Chris left the mules arrived and we crammed our packs full of gear and started the 5 mile hike up to Glacier Meadows. The trail wound its way through some avalanche chutes where the trail got very narrow. As we came up the trail to a bend around one of the rocky chutes a mountain goat was waiting for us. He let me walk within 5 feet of him before he scrambled up the hillside a bit and we passed by. By this point, one of our guides, Meaghan turned back as she had been throwing up several times and was feeling quite ill. Soon we arrived at Glacier Meadows which had a yurt for the rangers and we stopped for a bit of rest and some water. Loading up we left the trees behind as we began to hike into the high meadow and alpine zone where the grass was green and the flowers were out. We followed a small creek up a drainage toward the top of the ridge. Along this section of the trail I was bonking pretty hard, it was hot, I was tired and I hadn't eaten enough. I had packed too light on food, opting to leave too much of my lunch snacks behind at Lewis Meadows. I slowed down a bit and walked towards the back of the pack with Craig.

At last we arrived at the top of the ridge which was the top of a huge moraine that overlooked the blue glacier below and Mt. Olympus and the snow dome rising up above us. It was an overwhelming glorious sight. For the entire 18 mile approach you don't really ever get any good views of the mountain until the very end and you come up over the ridge and then everything is in view. We all sat down and gazed at the spectacle before us. Everyone pulled out their cameras, they way you always do the first time you see a spectacular scene. We changed into long pants out of shorts, put on gaiters and a long sleeve shirt and made our way down the moraine across the snow field to the edge of the blue glacier. Here we stopped and put on our harness, crampons and light gloves and split into two rope teams. Alaina, myself, Seth and Jeff on one rope and Craig, Sue, Steve, Karl and Jim. We'd maintain these positions for the next 24 hours through the next day. Off we set across the glacier, you can follow our route on this google map. Its an amazing landscape where ancient blue ice crunches beneath your crampons, interspersed with snow. I took a shot with the camera and Alaina snapped at me to stop taking photos and concentrate on walking where she walked. I asked her to explain her thought process as we crossed. She explained how snow could be covering crevasses, and that old ice was the safest. Another thing we had to watch out for was melting holes in the ice and snow that could appear shallow or firm but be an icy dip. She also explained how crevasses form, in glacier fields the convex surface cracks and splits, on snow fields higher up the same convex surface does the same but with height playing factors as snow lower down pulls away from snow higher up. The majority of the crevasses we walked around or crossed were very small, maybe 6 inches wide. There were some larger ones but we avoided those, most of the really big crevasses were higher up on the snow fields.


Once safely across the glacier we stopped for a break and removed the ropes and crampons and refilled our water. We stared in awe at the gnarled ice fields above the glacier. A maw of cracks they were beautiful to behold. We then turned right or north and started climbing the snow ridge and rocks towards our high camp. A short while later as the long sun shone we pulled into camp just before 5 pm, 11 hours on the trail, 9.2 miles and 5340 feet since Lewis Meadows. Seth, Jeff and myself opted to camp on the snow and cleared a flat place to pitch our tent. While Craig and Alaina cooked up some dinner, I tried to get a good close up photo of everyone in the group, but I missed Jim who was lying down resting. Diner was ramen, that cheap kind you haven't eaten since college, but it tasted so very very good. I had a steaming overflowing cup and two chocolate puddings. By this time Sue was exhausted, I think maybe more mentally than physically and she decided she'd not be accompanying us on the summit attempt the following morning. Craig gave us a few minutes rest and then had everyone meet Alaina on the snow above camp and she went over self arrest with an ice ax in the event of a fall and Sue took a photo or two for me with my camera.

Then a quick flurry of last minute packing and arranging for the early morning summit day, and we lay down in our tents. It was 8pm and within seconds we were all asleep, tired again from a long day and attempting to get in as much sleep before the 1 am wake up call.

Stats : 9.2 miles - 5340ft asc - 350 dec - 11 hr

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