I ran/hiked Mt. Olympus with MattV this afternoon, and we had a really good day. We started about 12:45 and there was quite a lot of wind, so I was really worried that it would be bad on top. It was pretty warm though and we both had on short sleeve shirts. About a half mile up we met up with Carol, a friend of Matt's that has summited Everest, and we chatted with her for a few minutes. She told us that the conditions were not great and she decided to come back down without making it to the top, so I was a bit concerned, but felt like we would be able to make it to the top without too much of a problem.
The snow started about 2/3 of the way up and I put on my spikes and they really helped a lot. I stopped to put on my ipod and Matt kept pushing. There was a lot of snow on the steeper sections and I was going to take a break at the saddle to take a gel, but Matt had already gone up, so I decided to keep going. From the saddle it was a pretty easy climb to the summit with some nice bucket steps almost the whole way in the snow. It was a lot less technical than most of my Olympus summits in the snow, and where there is usually icy boulders to maneuver, there was a lot of snow, so it made it much easier.
We made it to the top just after two hours, and the wind was strong and I got pretty cold. We hung out up there for about 15 minutes and decided to bail. My feet were frozen. We ran as much of the descent as we could, but the steep sections were slick and a little icy and we both slipped and fell a few times. We stopped at the saddle to take a gel and then ran most of the way to the bottom. It was a great day. It took us just over 4 hours round trip, 1:26 on the descent and we got about 4400 feet of elevation gain, which gives me about 6600 for the week. | 