With my friend Chris, a prof in Atmospheric Sciences, peering at the weather models all week, we finally came up with a plan for a 3 day mountaineering trip. Chris also has 2 children so this would be, as he called it, "a fine start and end to the summer climbing season". Based on various forecasts, we decided on Mt Anderson in the Dosewallips region of Olympic Nat. Park. The Olympic Climber's Guide describes a "rather difficult traverse" from Hayden Pass to Anderson Pass which we thought we'd attempt in the reverse if the Eel Glacier wasn't too broken up.
I hadn't been to the Olympics in many years so I was excited about getting back there. Chris picked me up at 5am on Sat and we loaded mountain bikes and our packs onto his car. The road to the trailhead up the Dosewallips has been washed out for 3-4 years and you get an extra 5.5 miles and 1000' of elevation gain up a dirt road to add to the workout. We thought mountain bikes would ease the pain and they were an excellent addition to our normal mountaineering gear. We drove over to the Edmunds ferry and then from Kingston to the washout (600' elevation). We left the car around 8am pushing our bikes along the narrow trail next to the Dosewallips river. After about 200 yards we pushed them up into the woods and onto the dirt road.
We slowly cycled up the road enjoying the cool air and watching for random rocks coming down the side of the road. The road will need repairs if and when they fix the washout as many small slides have slid across some or all of the road surface in places. We got to the ranger station and campground at a little before 9am. We parked our bikes out of sight behind a building and locked them just so someone else didn't decide to avoid the 5.5 mile hike back. The ranger said some other group had just down the traverse in the
opposite direction which made us feel good that the Eel Glacier was still passable.
We shouldered our packs and head up the well maintained trail (thanks trail crews!) at 9:15 (1600' elevation) . The woods were beautiful with lots of magnificent old growth, carpets of moss, blue berry bushes, etc. Really a very enjoyable hike. We hiked the 10.5 miles to Anderson Pass (4465') and arrived around 2pm.
We left Anderson Pass took the Anderson Moraine trail up and began to follow Route 2 in the Olypic Climbers Guide. The Anderson Glacier has receded a great deal. We followed the trail to the right until it began to peter out. Once we saw the lakes we eventually went to the far right and found the trail again that brought us down to the lakes at 3:30 (4967'). A direct descent would be possible if there's a lot of snow. We passed the lakes and headed up to the
"col" described in the route which is really more of flat area on a shoulder above the lake. The "steep gully" is then up and right. The guide rates this a "grade I class 2" climb but Chris and I both agreed that class 3-4 is more realistic. I was very glad to have a lot of climbing experience as there is a great deal of exposure and somewhat loose rock while climbing the "steep gully" described in the route. We would have done a short rappel if we were to descend this route. Perhaps climbing it with day packs rather than full packs
would be less sketchy. The grade eased off and we continued up snow and scree to the shoulder below the peak at ~7000' at 5:30. We dropped our packs and sat on top of Mt Anderson (7321') taking pictures of the Olympus massif, Constance and the all the surrounding peaks. We headed down at 6pm, roped up and put on
crampons to descend the Eel Glacier. The Eel was in surprisingly good shape although we definitely had to thread our way in between open crevasses and slots beginning to open. We got off the snout of the Eel onto the flat wash and found a sandy area next to the a few streams. The sandy spot appeared to have the indentation from helicopter skids which was very possible as a search-and-rescue for two missing hikers had occurred that week. We set up camp at 8pm. The terrain reminded me a lot of Alaska - big glacier, rock and
sand and hardy plants slowly taking back the land from the receding glacier.
We left camp at 8am the next morning following the stream, winding our way between increasingly dense pockets of slide alder, firs and cedars. We often dropped into the Silt Creek river bed to get a few hundred feet of easy movement only to be forced back up into the thickets. Progress slowed as we fought more and more difficult foliage until we were into full on BW4-BW5 bushwacking. (See http://www.alpenglow.org/themes/subalpine/brush-ratings.html
for the BW rating system.) The slopes steepened and we even brought out the rope for a handline at one point to aid our traverse of steep dirt gully. This was pretty serious stuff as we were doing complete "green belays" walking on limbs, pulling on limbs to move up and sideways. We agreed if you fell during this section you were going to get seriously hurt and rescue would be extremely difficult - if your partner could ever find you again. To top off the morning Chris disturbed a wasp nest and got stung 3 times. Eventually we
grunted, wacked, sweated, pushed and pulled our way into more open mature timber and then steep grassy hillsides as we climbed under the peak known as Sentinel's Sister (6310'). We finally got to the col between Sentinel and Sentinel's Sister at 12:30pm where we stopped for lunch. It had taken about 4.5 hours to go 2 to 2.5 miles. We got to Hayden Pass (5847') at 2pm after some more interesting traversing involving steep scree and slightly sketchy gully downclimbing.
Getting on the maintained trail at this point was a huge treat and we headed down the trail for the camp at Deception Creek, about 7 miles away. My feet hurt from all the sidehilling and we were both pretty tired from the bushwacking so the hiking was mostly about getting down the trail so we eat and sleep. The camp at Deception Creek was very nice (privy, bear wire and water all easily accessible).
We left camp the next morning at 7:45am and got to the Ranger Station at 11:15 after another 8 miles of hiking. We saw one other hiker a mile or so before the RS - the first person we had seen since Anderson Pass. We put our mountaineering helmets on for the rocky ride down and got back to the cars at 11:45.
Overall it was a fun 3 day trip except for about 4 hours on Sunday. I don't think I'd recommend doing the trip in this direction. Coming from Hayden Pass would allow you to spend more time on open slopes and less bushwacking altho you can't avoid at least .5 - 1 mile of it. On the other hand, you'd need to pay attention to the Eel Gl from Sentinel's Sister's slope to try and decide where to ascend. The glacier had a few slots that almost went the entire width that could be trouble and time consuming to thread.
Certainly doing just Mt Anderson and/or adding West Peak (also above the Eel Glacier) would be a fun and worthy adventure. The area is really beautiful and sees far less traffic than a similar area in the Cascades. As long as the road is washed out, bringing mountain bikes makes a lot of sense to do the road section.
