Over the last couple of summers I have whittled away at the prominent peaks in the Pacific NW. It was nice to have trips lined up in the summer in the PNW to look forward to as the temperatures race up to 90 degrees plus pretty quickly here in Utah. I completed all of the WA volcanoes last year so looked for a new adventure. Mt Olympus, the “gem” of the Olympic Range was calling this year.

Melissa Arnot-Reid is one of the owners of Pacific Alpine Guides and I had a loose association with her from her run at the 50 States Highpoints. She finished #26 in the Women’s category and I finished #27. I had also briefly said hello to her when we saw her guiding a client in Nepal on Pumori – not that she would remember me! I think it was Larina that told me that Melissa had her own guiding company so when I saw that her group guided up Mt. Olympus, I signed up. I chose a trip in July as the snow cover would be more substantial – making the climb a more fun, glacier climb vs traveling over rocks and ice later in the year. Also, the bugs would not be in full force and lastly, the area waterfalls would be at their height as Joel initially indicated he could do some photography while I was on the climb.

Well, the best laid plans, as they say … the guide that had been assigned was injured on another trip. Being a very small company, they do not have the huge number of guides that other organizations have. They were able to find a guide but I had to delay the trip a month until mid-August. Not optimal from the get-to but I certainly wanted to make the trip.

The first morning we met at the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center for a gear check with our guides, Alan and Tatum. They had been guiding together in Peru and had basically just landed, sorted gear and drove to the trailhead. They had been recruited from another, larger Seattle-based guide service. After the gear check, we loaded our packs and set off down the trail. A lot of things at the start transpired to make this one of the worst days of hiking I have ever had – late start because the one “local” client was an hour late, hot and humid weather, huge (50#) packs and a pace that was actually too fast for me. Joel can attest that I hike SLOW probably around the 2mph rate with a heavy pack. The group took off out of the gate closer to 3mph.

As it was a small group (2 guides and 4 clients) there was really not the luxury to have a fast group and a slow group so I just sucked it up and went fast. Our campsite would be at the Lewis Meadows Campground which was 10.5 miles. At about mile 6 my right calf cramped and I couldn’t walk. It was absolutely crazy – I was hydrating correctly and was also taking in ample electrolytes but I think the pace and the heat might have been the main factors. I sort of hobbled along for awhile and then Tatum suggested taking a mouthful of dry electrolyte drink mix. She said that she had heard that this process was meant to overload and “shock” the nervous system into thinking that it was receiving adequate electrolytes, even though I had been consuming them throughout the hike. Whatever the crazy science was, it worked and after a mile or so, I was back to normal. Weird.

Once we arrived at camp we set up tents, cooked dinner and then went to sleep. The next morning was more of a leisurely pace as we ate breakfast and packed up. We only had a little over 7 miles but, compared to Day 1’s elevation gain of only 728′ over 10 miles, we would climb 3,900′ in 7 miles – shorter but much steeper!

Once we arrived at camp we again pitched the tents and cooked dinner with an early bedtime in anticipation of an “alpine start” the next morning which was our summit day.