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Mt. Olympus 2010
The team on this trip consisted of Bare Grundles, Benis, Smashie and myself. The approach hike was wet but it wasn't too cold, probably in the mid to low 50's. When we got to the Olympus gaurd station at 9 mile island, there was a group of about 10 park rangers leaving. They said that there was high avalanche danger and that no one had succesfully made it to the summit yet that year. And there was only one other climbing party on the whole mountain. Most of the rangers were new and they seemed scared...it was pretty funny actually. I think Benis and Smashie got a little freaked out about it because they didn't know what to expect. On the other hand, Bare and myself were completely confident, since this would be our 3rd summit of Olympus in the past four years.We made it to glacier meadows in decent time and had a little pre-climb drink or two...or five and ate as much as we could. We started our summit attempt a little late the next morning and by the time we got to blue glacier the snow had already gotten soft under the sun.
On the way up the snow dome I was down to just boots and pants because it was getting so hot. We stopped at a pile of rocks which seemed to be the only shade on the mountain, so we could eat and recharge a bit before heading up snow dome.
When we got to the top of the snow dome, we could see clouds starting to surround the mountains and the wind began to pick up a little. After we got to the crux the clouds covered everything and it started to get fun. There was a lot of snow on the summit and it was melting. We decided that it would be best not to attempt it since its diffacult to place any kind of saftey in those conditions. We settled for the middle peak instead and called it a day.
On the way back to glacier meadows I accidently dropped my camera off the top of the snow dome. It bounced down about 400ft before it slammed into a pile of rocks and flew into pieces. The snow was so deep and soft that we could barely glacade down the snow dome. I managed to find all the pieces of my camera...except the memory card. I put it back together and it actually turned on. On Blue glacier there were millions of little black glacier worms...that was kind of strange.
On the morning we left glacier meadows it had started to snow again. We camped at the OGS again on the way out and sampled the local vegatation and fungus. I'd say it was a good trip.