"The Humes glacier, over which we went to Mount Olympus"
"Our nature-made camp in Elwha basin"
From the top of this new divide we gazed upon the clustering peaks of Olympus across the huge glacier of the Hoh River. Jagged peaks they were, half-clothed, at times, with clouds, their ragged rocky pinnacles showing black in contrast to the dazzling fields of snow which stretched away below us as in some Arctic scene.
Getting down to the Hoh glacier proved difficult work, nearly every foothold of the descent being cut with our axes in the steep ice wall down which we worked, while yawning crevasses below our course were distinctly unpleasant reminders of what might happen should the leader slip and the rope man be insecurely anchored with his ice axe.
Then a mile up steep snow slopes, and detours around the base of lesser piles of rock rising almost perpendicularly from the floor of snow, and we were at the foot of the final climb. A last wild scramble up a chimney, the way made risky by slipping stones and treacherously rotten rock, a tug of the rope, a helping hand, and we were on the summit of Olympus!
From no peak that either of us had ever climbed, in the Pacific Playland, Alaska, or Northern Europe, had we looked upon more picturesquely rugged, varied, or altogether fascinating mountain scenery. Olympus stands at the dividing of the ways of a half-dozen watersheds, and from its summit one sees canyons radiating in all directions from the glaciers that cluster on its flanks and those of its lesser neighbors, in whose depths are growing streams that rush away to Puget Sound and the Pacific. All about, west, northeast, and south, are snow-clad, saw-tooth peaks, lined with glaciers. Billowing over these wild summits and hiding them each in turn, were wondrously tinted cloud banks, whose overhanging effects of light and shadow, and freakish alteration of the view made of the broad panorama a titanic kaleidoscope.
For an hour we sat there, our sweaters about us, munching raisins and reveling in the scenic wonders of the world below us. From a metal tube, well protected in a rock monument, we took and read the records of previous climbers, left since the first ascent in 1907. And then, after the habit of our kind, we added the story of our own expedition to the others and started on the homeward trail toward our cave and patient Billy.