JasonG Posted February 25, 2005 Share Posted February 25, 2005 Climb: The Brothers-Normal route to South Summit Date of Climb: 2/21/2005 Trip Report: Just a quick update for those interested in condtions of the eastern olympics. In a word: DRY!!!! My wife and I caught the ferry over from Keystone Sunday afternoon and made the leisurely drive to the Lena lake TH. We were a little disappointed at the mass of cars and the numerous parties signed in to climb the brothers, but shouldered our packs and set off anyway. We left the cars about 2:45 pm A snowless hike brought us to lower lena lake and gun toting locals. Quickly using the restroom (with TP!), we continued up in patchy snow to the normal camping spot in the valley of the silent men. We pitched out tent on less than 1 inch of snow, cooked a good dinner, and were in bed early. Setting out the next morning at 6:30 we didn't see much in the way of continous snow, a common theme of the weekend. The good news is that there is a pretty good climber's path to follow, meaning routefinding was real easy. An hour of hiking or so brought us to the main southern gully and the start of the normal route. From here you can see up towards the summit and we were shocked by the sight! Conditions looked like late July and not late February. No snow on most of the route, with only patchy snow in the gullies. So linking patches of snow and easy scrambling, we steadily made our way up the route, only slightly getting off-route near the top (we should have stayed farther right). Total time to summit was a little over four hours, arriving around 11am. What a view!! I had climbed the Brothers before, but didn't get to see anything. It might have one of the more expansive views of any mountain I've climbed: Candadian Coast range, all the Washington volcanos, Mt Hood, Puget Sound, downtown Seattle, Lk Washington, not to mention most of the major Olympic peaks. We stayed for an hour admiring the view and warm, windless weather, and were sorry to have to leave. Retracing our route back down, along with packing up and hiking out, consumed the rest of the day for us. We arrived just at dark at the cars, without the need for headlamps (it was close though). All in all, a fun winter weekend with the wife!! The only thing is, on warm days, make sure to wear your helmet in the main gully- we saw a good bit of rockfall! And you may want some body armor when traveling past lower lena lake -we had to yell "hold your fire" to some kids shooting (we felt) wildly from one of the lakeshores. Sheesh! Gear Notes: Ice axe, crampons, helmet Approach Notes: Patchy snow the whole way, never gets deep! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kraken Posted February 25, 2005 Share Posted February 25, 2005 awesome! well you just answered all my questions then! I look forward to doing the brothers in a few weeks when I get down to Washington. As far as the gunners...that is stupid. I can't believe they'd go up to Lena Lake and shoot there. That area is (i believe) closed to guns. I'm not against guns by any means, but there are certain places where you probably shouldn't shoot, and Lena is one of them... Maybe I'll bring my gun up to Rainier, there's got to be some pretty sweet target practice up at 14,000 feet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Norman_Clyde Posted February 25, 2005 Share Posted February 25, 2005 I love being able to look right down from the Brothers summit to tidal waters in Hood Canal less than 20 miles away. Not quite the BC coast range, but pretty cool nonetheless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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