Olympus
In the hilly residential section of Tacoma is a studio-workshop. On a
certain September morning its inward appearance indicated the recent
passage of a tornado--a human tornado of homecoming after a long
campaign of camping. From dunnage bags, scattered about the floor,
showered sleeping-bags, ruck sacks, a nest of cook pots, "packs," the
rubber shoes of the north country, belts, knives, ammunition, and a
thousand and one odds and ends. In a corner was an oiled silk tent, the
worse for wear. Elsewhere, a clutter of ice axes, snowshoes, glacier
spikes, guns, photographs, and hides occupied the available space.
The room and its contents smacked of the regions that lie about the
Arctic circle, and thence, indeed, they had just come. For Mine Host was
barely back from Mt. McKinley and many months of venturesome exploration
in Alaska.
Next to watching the other fellow prepare his camping kit and discuss
plans for the Big Trip, when you yourself are to stay at home, I think
the most exasperating experience is to hear the good tales told by the
man fresh returned from some thrilling expedition. As you listen to the
story of the big untrodden places, the routine of your everyday life
seems woefully petty, and you are all at once distracted with a mad
resolve to go and do likewise. It is a dangerous symptom, and should be
prescribed for immediately--though the only real remedy I know is to
close one's eyes and ears and flee from the place of temptation. For
this is the Wanderlust, the joyful plague of the sinner who has lost all
count of time and ties in following some wilderness trail, and desires
nothing more than to lose them again.
If McKinley and Alaska were out of reach, across Puget Sound lay a
closer land of mountains and little-trodden trails. "Why not try
Olympus?"
The suggestion was no sooner made than accepted. Before I entered the
room six months of stay-at-home was my unquestioned outlook, but all at
once a hike to Olympus appeared the most reasonable thing in the world.
Mine Host, upon whom the blame rests, was out of the running, for he
started East the next day. But his companion, the Mountain Climber,
although scarcely yet with a taste of civilization after months in the
wilderness, was in a receptive frame of mind. It took us two minutes to
decide definitely upon the excursion. Twenty minutes more and we had
picked outfits from the wealth of paraphernalia all about us, and at
midnight we saw the lights of Seattle's water front vanish astern as a
Sound steamer bore us toward Port Angeles on the Olympic peninsula.
At times on our journey the Mountain Climber reminded me that on his
inland voyaging Stevenson traveled with a donkey. Inasmuch as our pack
animal was a horse, that rather hurt my feelings; the inference was so
obvious. However, that horse was more than half mule, so far as
disposition is concerned. We hired him at Port Angeles and Billy was his
name.
"And when I walk, I always walk with Billy,
For Billy knows just how to walk,"
chanted the Mountain Climber as we started out blithely. But long ere we
crossed the divide separating the town from the valley of the Elwha
River we realized that if Billy knew how to walk he emphatically refused
to put his knowledge into practice. For Billy was a stubborn loafer
until it came to night time, when he bent his pent-up energy to getting
as far from camp as possible between dusk and sun-up.
[Illustration: "Canoeing is the most satisfactory method of travel
extant"]
[Illustration: The pack train above timber line
From a photo by Belmore Browne]
There are three distinct methods of travel on the trail. You may ride
horses and carry your supplies on a pack-horse. You may walk and let the
pack animal do the burden bearing. Or you may be a host unto yourself
and bear your entire household on your back, with your own legs
supplying locomotion. On this trip we chose the middle course, and
walked, while Billy was our common carrier. Back packing is a strenuous
undertaking where many miles are to be covered, and yet a superfluity of
horses is a nuisance if the going is rough and instead of gaining speed
with many animals you actually lose it. So it seemed to us the best way
was to go afoot, with a single pack-horse.
The brawling Elwha was our guide to Olympus, for its headwaters spring
almost from the base of the mountain, and our trail wandered up the bank
of the stream until, perhaps a dozen miles beyond our departure point
from the highroad, we came to an appetizing meadow, and the pleasantest
mountain home imaginable.
It was the log house of the "Humes Boys," who seem as much of an
institution in the Olympics as the mountains themselves. Bred in the
Adirondacks the Humes migrated westward and hit upon this isolated
homestead in the corner of Washington, where a growing influx of hunters
and fishermen finds them out and they are kept busy during the summer
months as guides and packers to the many vacationists who know them and
their knowledge of the surrounding regions. In the winter they trap
and--I imagine from the evident tastes of Grant Humes--read good books
on out-of-door subjects, close to the glowing stove, while the winds
whistle up and down the valley and the snow piles high. Gardeners, too,
they are in a modest way, raising all their vegetables. And cooks! What
cooks! In years gone by some pioneer settler had planted plum trees, and
when we first saw Grant Humes no housewife was busier with jelly-making
than he.
"It's a bother now, and I don't suppose I enjoy it more than any other
man likes such work," said he. "But when we're here in January and
February, pretty well shut off from the world, and there's a great
sameness about the food, I tell you a hundred glasses of plum jelly look
almighty good--not to mention tasting!"
I can vouch for the taste of it in September; if the midwinter season
improves the flavor I'm in a most receptive mood for a Christmas
invitation to the cabin on the Elwha!
For those who have the right sort of taste, existence such as the
Humes's must seem quite Utopian. Their garden and their rifles,
supplemented by importations from the store "down below," feed them;
their meadows supply hay for their stock; fuel of course is everywhere,
and a little captivated stream brought to the house in a hand-hewed
flume supplies an icy approximation of "running water." Hemming in the
meadowland oasis are giant hills, their neighboring flanks hidden by
mighty timber, their summits gray and brown beneath mantles of brush and
berry, closing in the valley so resolutely that its hours of sunlight
are almost as meager as in the cavernous fjord lands of Norway.
After Humes's the trail wound through abysmal forest depths, skirting
fir and pine and cedar of unbelievable girth, or making irksome detours
where some fallen monarch blocked the way. Needles and ferns there were
underfoot, a drapery of moss overhead, and everywhere a penetrating
silence. The most _silent_ woods imaginable are those of the wet coast
country, where the trees are enormous and set close together, thickets
and ferns clutter the ground beneath them, and moss clings to the lower
limbs; sunlight, if not a total stranger, at best is but an itinerant
acquaintance.
When the whim seized it the fickle trail deserted one bank of the Elwha
for the other, one of us leading Billy across while his companion, in
vain effort to keep dry-shod, essayed perilous crossings on logs, often
as not resulting in disaster.
Toward evening of the fourth day we dragged Billy up a final hill.
Except for scattered and weather-beaten blazes, all vestiges of the
trail had vanished, and, in fact, Grant Humes had told us that no one
had been that way for two years, a fact testified by fallen trees and
the unrepaired destruction of spring freshets. Hidden at the base of
giant Douglas firs was all that remained of the Elwha, now scarcely more
than a brook, its waters opaquely white with the silt of glaciers close
at hand. Suddenly we emerged upon a hillock and below us lay Elwha
Basin, where the river has its birth.
A cup, carpeted with grass, walled with crags; an amphitheater studded
with trees, hemmed in by banks of snow, and roofed by blue sky--such is
the basin of the Elwha. At the far end is a wall of rock, over which
tumbles the jolly little infant river in a silvery cascade, and beyond
is a snow bank jutting into the greenery of an upper meadow. From a dark
cave at the glacial snowbank's base the river seemed to have its start,
though beyond the snow, from still loftier cliffs, fluttered another
ribbon of water coming from unseen heights beyond. Westerly a few jagged
snow peaks peered down upon us over the nearer cliffs, and great shadows
reached across the pleasant valley to the very base of our little hill
of vantage.
At the near end of the basin we found a wonderful camp place all
prepared by our thoughtful nature hostess. It was a cave at the foot of
a cliff, whose ceiling of overhanging rock protected admirably against
the vagaries of the elements, while wood and water were close at hand,
and ferns and flowers made Elysian setting. We turned Billy loose in
the knee-high grass, where he spent a week of loafing, unable, for once,
to escape, thanks to the cliffs and a back trail easily blocked by
felling a few small trees. Happily, then, we sprawled upon our blankets,
with the sweet-smelling spruce boughs beneath us and the warm light of
the fire playing odd pranks with the dancing shadows in our rock-roofed
resting place. Beyond the ghostly circle of the firelight were the jet
outlines of trees, and, farther, reaching up to a million stars, the
mountains. And beyond those mountains lay Olympus, for whom we had come
so far and now must go still farther.
The few unessentials of our commissary we left at the cave, and with
grub for five days and bedding on our backs, and the ice axes in our
hands, like the bear of the song, we started over the mountain to see
what we could see.
A steep snow chute called the Dodwell and Rickson Pass was our way of
passage over the divide to the Queets Basin, where the river of that
name commenced its journey to the Pacific, while behind us the melting
snows that formed the Elwha found outlet eastward in Puget Sound. As we
trudged up the steep slopes of the Pass it was soon apparent that other
travelers beside ourselves used the snowy route, for broad tracks showed
where bruin on his own broad bottom had coasted down the incline but a
few hours previously, a recreation youthful bears seem to enjoy about as
thoroughly as men cubs. There was indeed a goodly population of bear in
the upper regions of the Queets, and the hide of one of them is at my
fireside now. It would have been no trick at all to kill several, for we
saw them daily foraging among the blueberry uplands, with their pink
tongues snaking out first on one side, then on the other, garnering in
the fruit from the low bushes. But we could pack only one skin, so we
left the others warming their owners, where they most properly belonged.
Queets Basin is a rough mountain valley, covered for the most part only
with berry bushes, and with rocky gorges cutting its surface where the
river's several branches had worn away deep courses. Overshadowing the
basin were the outposts of Olympus itself, with the snout of Humes's
glacier thrusting its icy seracs almost into the berry land, and the
pinnacled peaks behind rising majestically against the northern
skyline. Westward, the roaring Queets vanished down a canyon, through a
country of the roughest kind, and, we were told, one hitherto
unexplored. A journey to the sea following the white-watered Queets
would be a worth-while experience, we thought, seeing the first mile of
it; but like many another, the Mountain Climber and I, unless we live to
the age of Methuselah and devote all our years to outings, will never be
able to take one half the trips we have planned and secretly long for;
exclusive of our cherished ramble down the Queets!
The packs slipped from our backs at the base of a giant fir, and we
called it camp. Next to the bear who almost thrust his nose into my bed
next morning, my most vivid recollection of that camp was the blueberry
bread we concocted in the frying-pan, which was fit for the very gods of
old Olympus.
Then we climbed Olympus.
Coming on the heels of Mt. McKinley, it was no great feat of
mountaineering for the Mountain Climber, but nevertheless it combined
happily all the varied attractions of climbing. The ascent of Olympus
does, indeed, entail almost every sort of mountaineering, and some of it
reasonably difficult and dangerous. In the first place, the approach to
the mountain is perhaps its crowning feature; it is a man's sized trip
to get within striking distance, and to its inaccessibility is due the
fact that up to 1907 it was unscaled. When once reached, there are
goodly glaciers to be conquered, vast snow fields to be negotiated, some
hard ice work, and a lot of stiff climbing, all at long range from the
nearest practical base camp.
By daybreak we were under way. Through bushes, across a ravine, up a
narrow tongue of snow in a "chimney," and then over a shoulder of rock
debris, an outshoot of the lower lateral moraine of the Humes's glacier,
and we found ourselves on the seracs of the glacier's snout, with no
choice but to take to them. By the time we had found a way over the
broken green ice, with its sudden chasms, the sun was warm at our backs
and the chill of the dawn was forgotten. Then we emerged from the ice
hummocks which mightily resembled a storm-tossed sea suddenly petrified,
and commenced the leg-wearying ascent of the long snow field above,
which clothed the glacier and stretched toward a rim of dark cliffs, the
summit of the divide between us and Olympus proper. Toward the lowest
saddle in this rocky wall we set our course.
From the top of this new divide we gazed upon the clustering peaks of
Olympus across the huge glacier of the Hoh River. Jagged peaks they
were, half-clothed, at times, with clouds, their ragged rocky pinnacles
showing black in contrast to the dazzling fields of snow which stretched
away below us as in some Arctic scene.
Getting down to the Hoh glacier proved difficult work, nearly every
foothold of the descent being cut with our axes in the steep ice wall
down which we worked, while yawning crevasses below our course were
distinctly unpleasant reminders of what might happen should the leader
slip and the rope man be insecurely anchored with his ice axe.
Then a mile up steep snow slopes, and detours around the base of lesser
piles of rock rising almost perpendicularly from the floor of snow, and
we were at the foot of the final climb. A last wild scramble up a
chimney, the way made risky by slipping stones and treacherously rotten
rock, a tug of the rope, a helping hand, and we were on the summit of
Olympus!
[Illustration: "The Humes glacier, over which we went to Mount Olympus"]
[Illustration: "Our nature-made camp in Elwha basin"]
From no peak that either of us had ever climbed, in the Pacific Playland,
Alaska, or Northern Europe, had we looked upon more picturesquely
rugged, varied, or altogether fascinating mountain scenery. Olympus
stands at the dividing of the ways of a half-dozen watersheds, and from
its summit one sees canyons radiating in all directions from the
glaciers that cluster on its flanks and those of its lesser neighbors,
in whose depths are growing streams that rush away to Puget Sound and
the Pacific. All about, west, northeast, and south, are snow-clad,
saw-tooth peaks, lined with glaciers. Billowing over these wild summits
and hiding them each in turn, were wondrously tinted cloud banks, whose
overhanging effects of light and shadow, and freakish alteration of the
view made of the broad panorama a titanic kaleidoscope.
For an hour we sat there, our sweaters about us, munching raisins and
reveling in the scenic wonders of the world below us. From a metal tube,
well protected in a rock monument, we took and read the records of
previous climbers, left since the first ascent in 1907. And then, after
the habit of our kind, we added the story of our own expedition to the
others and started on the homeward trail toward our cave and patient
Billy.