Looking up the couloir leading to the summit.
Me at the summit. Not a particularly great photo, but I took very few on the climb. I guess that's Constance in the background.
It’s a long hike, and not, to my mind, a particularly exciting climb. It’s nice enough, I guess, but plenty of people.
This was another consolation climb, after a partner bailed on me at the last minute for a Rainier climb. So I figured this was a good target of opportunity.
I got up at 4:45, and drove to the trailhead - about 2 hours from Fremont. I would have taken the ferry, but it doesn't start running that early. Most of the climb is a long, mild hike, not particularly difficult. It's three miles in from the trailhead to Lower Lena Lake, then you follow the trail on from there. At one point, you hike through a deep forest, past house-sized boulders looming next to you -- I think this is called the Valley of the Silent Men, or something similar? I got to thinking what it would have been like when those boulders came crashing down there, decades or centuries ago.
Eventually, you break out of the trees, then it's an easy scramble up the side of the mountain. There was snow up towards the summit, and I put on my crampons because I had them, though there were plenty of folks up there in just tennis shoes and without even ice axes.
The one tricky bit is just below the summit. The slope narrows into a couloir, and below the end of it, you turn to the right, into what looks like a blind gap, but it leads easily to the summit area.
Me at the summit. Not a particularly great photo, but I took very few on the climb. I guess that's Constance in the background.
I made pretty good time, I summited in 5½ hours (the book says 7) and came down in another 4½. I had the cellular phone, and called home from the summit, which was kind of fun, my first time calling from a mountaintop. The reception was crystal-clear up there. Unfortunately, the sky wasn't; I couldn't see the interior of the Olympic range, couldn't even see Mt. Olympus. I considered scrambling over to the north peak, but the book (Climber's Guide to the Olympic Mountains) said it would take an hour or so, and I didn't want it that bad.
On the way down my feet were feeling kind of sore, so I stopped and soaked them in Lena Lake, and tried to call home from there, but there was no service, no surprise.
The odd thing is that I didn't - and still don't - feel much of a feeling of accomplishment. I can't really put my finger on why; maybe it's a simple as still being under the weather. Maybe because there were so many people there - there were two guys on the summit when I arrived, but probably ten people we descending as I came up the final rock crown. When I think back to the thrill of summiting Big 4, for instance, it was completely different. More likely, it was a matter of me wanting to have climbed Rainier with Fred, and looking south to see Rainier through the haze.
I guess I'd recommend doing the east ridge, (route 2 in the book) which puts you on the face seen from Seattle. It is "more steep and exposed", but then, at least, you'd be able to look at the mountain afterwards and see you where you climbed.