Olympic National Park - Bailey Range

WARNING

These are ROUGH PLANNING notes for a trip never taken, use this at your own risk for planning but please do your own research


Named after William Bailey, owner and publisher of the Seattle Press, who funded the Press Expedition

The Bailey Range traverse was made popular by Herb Crisler, who photographed the Disney film Olympic Elk in the Bailey Range in the 1930s and early 1940s. The route was first traveled by Billy Everett, who reached Cream Lake Basin in 1885 at the age of 16. Billy Everett made the traverse many times.

Bookmarks on the topic

Park Map

Dates

July 20th - 26th 2008 (Sunday through Saturday)

Routes

Its looking to me like the best bet is the South to North route, that way I can end in Sol Duc Hotsprings, meet my family (who'll probably come up on Thursday) and spend a day relaxing at the Hot Springs. :) ROUGH ROUTE OUTLINE

South to North

Gear

In addition (or sometimes in replace of) the normal gear :

Today we set our sights on Ferry Basin, but we wanted to avoid what has been described as the “Cream Lake Vortex” with its steep, unforgiving gullies, thick tangles of slide alder and hordes of blood thirsty mosquitoes, and instead travel off the beaten path, up and over the high ridge above us to the north and east of Stephen Peak before making our way down to Ferry Basin. Looking at the steep terrain above us, it seemed a daunting task indeed. We soon arrived at a large meadow-bowl that had a minor lateral ridge at the far end of it with a treeless saddle near its top. We began climbing the steep, grassy and talus strewn bowl to attain the saddle, switch backing up and up. We found many flattened areas of grass indicating that a heard of elk had recently bedded on the slope. We finally reaching the small saddle on the minor lateral ridge and from there we simply followed game trails another 200’ to the top of the major ridge. It was grassy, nearly level with a small snow-melt tarn nearby and would have made an excellent camp spot, having excellent views of nearby Stephen Peak, the south side of Mt. Ruth and lesser peaks. Below us in a beautiful valley was the very large and bright turquoise appearing, Stephen Lake. We gingerly picked our way eastward down a steep talus slope and to a knoll above Stephen Lake where we snacked and viewed possible routes ahead of us. We knew that we had to continue east, then climb onto the shoulder of Stephen Peak and continue to traverse to the south side of it. The best route appeared to be a scramble up a treed gully system on the far side of the lake to the NE shoulder of Stephen. We traversed on scree above the lake to the gullies, then climbed up talus and bushwhacked through the trees in the gullies which opened into a more alpine setting the higher we got. The heat was becoming oppressive and it slowed our progress significantly. Finally attaining the altitude we needed on the east shoulder of Stephen, we could see only barren rock and snow ahead of us on a sloping plateau that we needed to cross. We alternated between rock and snow on the easy traverse, trying to maintain a constant altitude in order to attain the ridgeline on the south side of Stephen. The snow was severely sun-cupped, making travel all that much slower and we used our ice axes mainly for security. We eventually strode onto the treed ridge and the welcome shade of a copse of trees. It had been nearly 5 hours since we had left our camp at Eleven Bull Basin. We rested and took in the view of the rolling, meadowy terrain of Ferry Basin nearly 1000’ below us. A game trail was very evident going southward right along the ridge crest in front of us, so we followed it until it petered out at a cliff-face about a mile along the ridge. From there it was a very steep parachute drop for nearly 500’ down a dirt & scree gully with many Hanging Vegetable Belays and large tumbling rocks being accidentally rolled down the slope in front of us. We eventually broke out onto the open heather slopes above the basin and made our way downward and across the basin toward our next camp which was Lake Billy Everett. The lake was beautiful! It was set at the base of rolling hills and had a perfectly flat rocky area next to it. Slightly above the lake was a flat grassy saddle that would be our camp because we hoped it would have enough of a breeze to keep the ever present hoard of blood-sucking skeeters at bay. We set up our bags with only bug netting again, then decided that we were sufficiently sweaty and funky enough to warrant bathing before contaminating our bags. Although beautiful to look at, Lake Billy Everett is not warm! We found a little sun-warmed tarn on the rock flats next to it that had tepid water and made a great spot to wash off a crusty layer of the Olympics. We returned to our camp, and ate dinner while doing the “Skeeter Dance” which consists of moving and walking quickly around the camp site while slapping, swatting and scratching at various body parts all the while eating your dinner. Thank God no one was watching because I’m a horrible dancer! After dark the incessant hum of the little shits quickly dissipated and the night was blessedly free of insects. Every star imaginable seemed to be displayed just for me that night. I drifted off among them as I closed my sleepy eyes.