Marilyn, Fionnuala and I converged at Doug's place and we packed into Doug's Westfalia and caught the ferry to Kingston for the long drive to the Hoh River Ranger station. We arrived around noon and met the other five members of our party. After picking up our camping permit at the ranger station we hiked eleven miles to Lewis Meadows campground.
On the second day we woke up to rain and overcast skies. We hiked seven miles up to Glacier Meadows at 4,300 feet. As we approached the camp we ran into Carry Porter, Mark Davis and a third member of their party as they were hiking down. They had attempted to climb Olympus the day before but hadbeen turned back by poor visibility and bad weather. Phil, the ranger on duty at Glacier Meadows told us that following several days of clear weather a system had moved in bringing intermittent bad weather.
On our climbing day we woke up at 2am to partially clear skies. We hiked up from Glacier Meadows to the moraine of the Blue Glacier and then down to the edge of the glacier where we roped up. I was on a rope with Marilyn and Fionnuala. Doug, Roger and Linda were on the second rope team; Mike, Elaine and Nancy made up the third team. We traversed the Blue Glacier to the rock buttresses at its west edge and followed a ramp up onto the Snow Dome. There were strong winds and intermittent whiteout conditions as we headed south across the Snow Dome and through Crystal Pass.
Our climbing route took us up the Blue Glacier to the saddle east of the West Summit of Olympus where we dropped out packs and our crampons for the summit push. We followed the rocky ramps on the east side of the summit, protecting some of the more exposed sections. At the summit we spent a good long time basking in the sun. The weather had since changed to clear skies overhead with low-lying cloud cover stretching in most directions below us. Olympus is one of the few spots from which it is possible to see both Mt. Rainier and the Pacific ocean. We could see Rainier but unfortunately the cloud cover prevented us from seeing the ocean.
We rappelled off of the summit block and returned to Glacier Meadows by the same general route as on the approach. Our schedule included an extra day for a second summit attempt in case of bad weather so the hike out was not as grueling as it might have been. On the fourth day we camped at Five Mile Island. The final day was a short hike back out to the trailhead.
I took a short summit video (for best results right-click and choose Save As and save on your hard disk before playing.
