I climbed Mt. Olympus this morning before work. Our Lone peak trip for tomorrow has been cancelled (again) because of weather, so we decided to do Olympus today instead. I think this is the 5th time this year we have had to cancel, so I am not confident that I will be able to get a winter ascent this year.
We made really good time up to about 7500 feet, and from there we were in snow the rest of the way, which did slow us down. There was quite a bit of ice on the trail where it had been packed in by other hikers, and there were several sections that we really had to take care. The final push after the saddle was fun, and there were a few dicey sections with ice covered boulders to climb over. Nothing extremely serious, but I fall wouldn't be good at all.
It felt good watching all of the slugs monotonously commuting to work on 2-15 and I was grateful I wasn't one of them. There is no better way to start a day then on a peak.
About 5 minutes from the top it started to snow on us, and we arrived on the summit with plenty of snow falling. We didn't stay long on top
The descent was a little eventful, as the trail was very technical with ice in a lot of steep sections. It was very hard to balance and I kept picking up too much speed. I had two falls, and the last one was pretty bad. I scraped up my arm, shoulder, bicep, and my pinky knuckle looks like meatloaf. Maybe I'll post up some pics later of my battle scars.
It was an incredible way to start my day, and we got in over 4,000 feet of elevation gain. It took us about 4 hours to complete the hike. | 