How Did I Even Get Here?

My coworker and friend, Arthur, had this rad idea for a multisport adventure in Olympic National Park, Washington: trek along the Hoh River, stash packrafts at a convenient put-in about 12 miles upriver, hike up and climb Mount Olympus, a glaciated peak only 8,000ft high, then returning to the rafts and floating outta there. He had already made several trips out there, one solo and one with his partner, Ashley. On the solo trip, he hoped to climb Mount Olympus but was unable to find anybody to rope up with, but he was able to raft the river. The second trip with Ashley was purely a backpacking trip, so he planned this trip in the hopes of making the ultimate Olympic NP multisport trip a reality!
I was added to the team to flesh out the rope team a little more, as three people is the ideal number for glacier travel.
And that's the story of how I ended up walking out of SEATAC airport on the morning of August 15th with Arthur and Ashley, each of us loaded down with approximately 60 pounds of backpacking, mountaineering, and packrafting gear!

Days 1 & 2 - Getting There

Usually I might not write a whole section on just getting there....... but boy howdy does this adventure deserve it.
We landed at SEATAC Friday morning and alerted Arthurs friend Jeremy, who lives in Bellingham, North of Seattle, that we'd made it and were ready to get picked up whenever he was. However Jeremy, the unit that he is, had stayed up late polishing his Master's thesis that was due the night before, was having a bit of a slow morning, and therefore was about two hours away once he finished getting ready for the trip.
I had spent two days feverishly dehydrating food for the trip, whereas Arthur and Ashley had opted to save room on the flights by purchasing food in Washington. Given our newly discovered abundance of time, we hoofed our heavy packs to the nearest bus stop and took the bus to a nearby shopping center fitted out with an REI, restaurants, Target, and Starbucks. We took our time doing a lil' gear explosion on a table in REI (thanks Tukwila REI!) to reconfigure from flying mode to backpacking mode, Arthur ran off to Target to grocery shop, then we landed at Starbucks to wait for Jeremy.
Not long after we settled in at Starbucks, Jeremy let us know he was on his way and would be just a couple hours, huzzah!
.... but then maybe 30-45 minutes later we got word that Jeremy's car broke down. He would have to deal with his broken down car and work out getting a rental in order to make it down to us, and now had an unknown ETA!
We patiently waited it out, and eventually Jeremy arrived in a souped up, shiny Subaru rental. The adventure was on!

We immediately made for the Hoh rainforest, about a four hour drive. Most of the day and drive was in intermittent rain, but we held fast to the weather forecast that the rain was supposed to break in a day or two. It was well after dark when we were making our way north towards the park and our campsite reservation at the trailhead only about 30 minutes ahead when we were stopped by flashing yellow lights blocking our path. A road worker informed us that the rain had caused an unexpected washout and it would take at least 3 or 4 days to repair!
It was something like 11pm by this time and we were dismayed. Where the hell would we sleep?? We turned around and headed back to Lake Quinault, only 10 minutes back the way we had come, where there were three state run campgrounds where we might be able to take refuge. They were all packed to the gills until we finally got to the third campground that was inexplicably empty!
We made camp at midnight in the rain and settled in for some rest before coming up with a game plan the next day.

Day two dawned still wet. We packed up camp and headed to the nearby Lake Quinault ranger station to get the 411 on what was going on. The super friendly ranger helped us thoroughly research the road closure and we came up with the plan of circumnavigating the entire Olympic Peninsula to approach the Hoh rainforest from the North instead of the South, and so we set off on the 7 hour journey.
We stopped for breakfast and coffee at The Beehive, a small town diner a little North of that town Kurt Cobain was from that I forget the name of. This would prove to be a mistake, but more on that later.
Jeremy, Arthur, Ashley and I made a great crew for these setbacks, as we weren't fazed in the slightest. We joked and laughed and napped and listened to silly podcasts the whole way until we finally rocked up to the Hoh rainforest campground a couple hours before dark!
We settled into camp, took a quick 1 or 2 mile loop hike and hopped in bed early to get a good nights rest before starting the adventure in earnest the following morning!

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Days 3 & 4 - Reaching Basecamp

Day 3 dawned relatively dry, having not rained much overnight! We packed up camp and Arthur, Ashley and I set about figuring out how to fit all our gear onto our packs. Ashley in particular was like a human leaning tower of Pisa she had so much strapped onto the top of her bag!
Jeremy, on the other hand, was utterly betrayed by his Beehive breakfast the day before and split his time between being confined in the campground bathroom and sitting in his camp chair..... ruh roh.
Jeremy regrettably pulled the plug on hiking up to Mount Olympus basecamp with us in favor of sticking close to a bathroom with ample TP, and we soon started hiking with our stupid heavy packs.
This was the perfect day for hiking! It was overcast and cool all day with dew slowly dripping from all the branches, so we stayed fairly dry and unsweaty all day. We also saw copious amounts of gigantic slugs characteristic of the Hoh rainforest!
The Wood Sorrell out there was also delightful and absolutely humongous. In the Southeast Wood Sorrell is small and tangy, but out here it keeps that tangy taste but is about 3 or 4 times as large! When I had a hankering to take a little break I would pick a little bouquet of Wood Sorrell and munch on it as I moseyed along the trail.
About 8 or so miles in we bumped into a soggy foursome taking a break with mountaineering gear plainly visible on the outside of their packs. We chatted with them a little bit and they had been out for several days in some horrible, rainy weather hoping for a window to make an attempt on Olympus that unfortunately never came. It was one of their first times ever backpacking, even! We were super impressed with their perseverance and also had high hopes that the weather would treat us a little better for our attempt.
By the time we made it to our camp at about 10 or 11 miles in we were all ready to drop. It was all we could do not to settle for the first campsite we came across and instead shoulder our packs to walk a liiiitle more to find an ideal camp spot, but I'm happy to report we found an awesome camp right next to a small branch of the Hoh river!
We had some time to relax, whip up our dinners, and chilled out a while. We were being closely observed by a little pack of crows who took advantage of my lack of watchfulness to break into one of my ziploc bags of food! From then on we were much more careful to keep our food stashed away even while at camp.
We decided that, as much as we didn't really want to, we would haul our packrafts just a little further, another 2 or so miles, up to a put-in that would give us a few more miles of enjoyable rafting on our way out. So, after a solid nights sleep, we shouldered our full 60lb packs and headed out once more. The trail all the way to the put-in at 12.4 miles was wonderfully flat and well curated, so before long we made it to our put-in where we stashed our rafts under some underbrush next to a massive fallen tree.
From here on out we thoroughly enjoyed our lighter packs as the trail steepened significantly all the way up to our basecamp for Mount Olympus at the Glacier Meadows campground. On the way up I both found myself a bit ahead and discovered a saved podcast on my phone, so the second half of the day went by quickly with a perfectly timed episode of The Downside that provided a delightful and hilarious distraction to the uphill slog, but luckily not enough of a distraction that I missed all the incredibly beautiful views on the way!
I arrived to Glacier Meadows campground quite unexpectedly, mainly due to the fact that Glacier MEADOWS campground is actually still located in the forest! Who named this thing!?
Anyway, it was an awesome campsite, replete with multiple outhouses. When Arthur and Ashley made it up as well, we set up camp, whipped up some dinner, and agreed to a 4am wake-up time for our summit bid in the morning. Given our super early morning, we settled in to sleep well before dusk, quite happily at that! Thank goodness the hiking was tough enough to tire us out sufficiently for a 6pm bedtime.

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Days 5 & 6 - Climbing Mount Olympus

Despite waking up with the prospect of finally getting to the main reason we'd done all this work... it was still hard to get up. We were able to get out of bed without TOO much hemming and hawing, make some breakfast, and start hiking all before first light.
As we were packing up we saw other headlamps at a different area of the campground, and our departure coincided with the owners of those lights! We stopped for a quick chat, and they were actually heading down after summitting a peak nextdoor to Olympus. They gave us notice that they had met another party who turned back on Olympus because there was a whole lot of blue ice on the route. We weren't sure what to make of that, as blue ice actually makes it technically safer as there would be no snow covering up crevasse hazards, so we just kept on truckin'.
We took the steep trail up towards the Blue glacier that guards Mount Olympus, and I got an instant boost of energy when we left the treeline and started navigating up a rocky trail with hints of the alpine environment peering down at us through the inky blackness.
My newfound enthusiasm took me to the top of a ridge looking down at the terminal moraine at the foot of the Blue glacier just in time for first light and an exciting first view of Mount Olympus!
I took in the view for a little while before absolutely zooming along the flat trail across the ridge to a steep talus slope that took us to the very foot of the glacier where we roped up and put on our glacier travel gear. We set off across the glacier which was gently sloped, but covered in ridges of ice. Imagine walking on the surface of a rough sea frozen in time and that was exactly what this was like! It was pretty awesome walking across this ice interspersed with leaping across thin, apparently bottomless crevasses as the day got brighter and brighter.
Before long we started to figure out what that other party meant by their warning of blue ice! The normal route up the Blue glacier is supposed to be a snow slog, walking on flat snow over innumerable invisible crevasses below and up a steep part of the glacier towards the rock outcropping that makes the summit block... However, this late in the season, there was NO snow whatsoever this low on the glacier! When we reached the steep part, it was just all ice. This was nice because we could easily see where the safe route was, but it also severely limited our options snaking around crevasse after crevasse, which became far more numerous when the glacier steepened.
There was a rock outcropping to the right that seemed possible to scramble through to circumvent the problematic part of the glacier, but I thought I spied a line through the broken glacier, so we pushed forward.
As we got into steeper and steeper terrain, we started pitching it out. Up until then, we had all been walking at the same time on one rope, and if one of us fell, the other two would drop to the ice and kick in our crampons and ice axes to catch the person who fell. It became steep enough, however, to necessitate anchors and active belays. We only brought two ice screws (that we weren't even supposed to need!), so one of them became protection for the leader while the other was to be saved for the belay at the top of the difficulties. In this way we went up about 3 pitches with some stretches of easy walking in between. I even did my first ever ice lead with snow crampons, a single mountaineering axe, and one ice screw for protection! It was definitely quite exciting.
Arthur took the lead of the third pitch, and when he got to the top he shouted down that we were absolutely, unequivocably screwed. He described a jumble of towering, tenuous seracs on one side and a 50ft dead vertical ice wall on the other, all of which were well outside the scope of the gear we'd brought (not to mention we were already pushing it to begin with). I desperately wanted to climb up to see as well, but Arthur soon made the call to bail, as the days warmth was steadily deteriorating the security of the ice, which was already of poor quality at the top of the pitch.
We slowly made our way down making several rappells and leaving behind a couple slings and carabiners, and finally made it back to the relative security of the less steep glacier below.
What a wild first attempt!
We made our way back to the lateral moraine where the trail back to basecamp went up the scree slope. Arthur and I were determined to make another attempt on Olympus the next day, our very last chance, so we stashed our gear at the bottom of the scree slope. The day had been much more than Ashley had bargained for, as she's relatively new to mountaineering and had been promised an easy snow slog up to a 200ft easy rock climb, so she opted to spend the next day chilling out at basecamp. And so we descended back to basecamp, wolfed down some dinner, and settled in for another early bedtime. Arthur and I set our alarms for 3am this time.

... And so dawned one of the longest days in the mountains I've ever had, both in the simple feeling of how long it was and the literal sense. In a trip already frought with ups and days, today would also be chock full of 'em!
We got up quickly when our alarms went off, eager to get started. We were hiking by 4am and made great time to the lateral moraine where we found our gear undisturbed by roving rodents that were sure to be in the area. We quickly made our way to a spot where we could easily hop off the glacier and onto the rock where we took a quick break and refilled water from a glacial runoff stream, and even got to explore a gorgeous little ice cave!
Almost as soon as we started up the rock outcropping, we found a clear trail on a section of small loose rocks. To say we were elated to find evidence of previous passage would be an understatement! I can't speak for Arthur, but that discovery seemed to put wings on my feet and I flew up the steep rocky slope. I had to remind myself to slow down and keep an even pace so as to avoid spurts of action with frequent breaks!
Before long we reached the base of the snow dome, a huge patch of snow atop the glacier where it eases off in steepness above the portion by which we'd been stymied the day before. We equipped our snow/ice gear, roped up, and started making our way up the edge of the slope to avoid the steepest, icy parts. We went up the spookiest part of the trip for me, a very steep snow slope where every third step seemed to give way, threatening to send me sliding down the slope into the rocks below. However, we made it through without incident to the flat terrain at the top of the snow dome..... where our hopes were dashed once more.
At the top, we could plainly see the rest of the glacier all the way to crystal pass, a pass to the other side of a ridgeline that was hidden to us when we were below the steep icefall. Arthur did not like the positioning of several massive crevasses that would necessitate us to travel laterally along them, meaning if one of us fell and slid into one, it would give the other very little time to react. We figured we were boned, but still had 3 or so hours to go until our turn-around time of 11am, so we'd wander around, see what there was to see, and have fun before heading back.
As we continued in the general direction of crystal pass, however, I was able to see what looked like a trail that went from the top of the snow dome near where we were, looped around towards crystal pass, weaved through the large crevasses that worried Arthur, and through the pass. Arthur wasn't so sure it was a trail, but since we had nothing better to do we figured we might as well keep heading in that direction until we reached a point we determined too dangerous to continue.
It turned out to be actual trail! We went all the way to the large crevasses big enough to swallow a house and Arthur showed me how to set up belays with snow pickets to navigate the crevasses. As the most experienced with snow and ice, Arthur took the lead, and I belayed him as he crossed a concerning snow bridge over the first crevasse then wound his way around the second. He plunged his snow picket into the snow and belayed me as I did the same, and we were off into crystal pass!
We were so, so stoked to get to this point and we felt like the summit might actually be in the cards again. We decided that if 11am came around and we were at the base of the summit block we would go for it and have noon be our hard line turnaround time.
We climbed up a short, steep scree slope through crystal pass and I descended first down the other side back to the ice where we encountered one of the sickest parts of the whole route. There was a small network of ~20-40ft deep crevasses with an ice/snow bridge literally zigzagging through them, only about two feet wide. Initially I was worried we might have another problem on our hands, but as I got closer I saw that there was clean ice below the snow, so I carefully walked through the zigzag and we were back onto relatively easy glacier on the other side!
We powered up steep snow, giving the occasional crevasse a hop or a walk-around on our way to the near false-summit which hid the true summit close beyond. In not too long, we made it to the bare rock of the false summit, and, myself in the lead, we made our way through the extremely loose rock to the ridge hiding the summit and......
Our hopes were instantly dashed.

When I reached the ridge I was greeted with about 3,000ft of exposure on the other side and a great view of the summit block a mere stones throw away. We had taken a slightly wrong route through the false summit, but we could plainly see the route up the snow to the start of the climb up the summit block. It was about 11:45 at this point, and we knew reaching the summit would take another 90 minutes at minimum. We were well and truly screwed this time.
We took a moment to relax among the rocks on the ridge, broke out our lunches, then started making our ways back the way we'd come. As ever, the way back went by so fast compared to the way up, and almost before we knew it we were making our way back down the rock outcropping. We came across some alpine ponds that are apparently called tarns, and I HAD to take a dip in one! The freezing cold water felt so, so good on my skin and the short break was also very much welcome.
Before long we were finally getting back into camp at about 3:30, nearly 12 hours after we'd set out. Ashley was beyond elated to see us, as we'd predicted our return to be around 2pm and she had started to worry, but all was well! We took off our restrictive mountaineering boots and came up with our game plan for our next steps. We decided it would be best to hike the 6 miles back to our rafts and the put-in immediately so that we could raft out first thing in the morning and still have time for Jeremy to take us to the airport for our early morning flight.
And so, after coming tantalizingly close to summitting, we packed up camp and set off on the six mile hike down, myself wearing flip flops to avoid wearing my painful mountaineering boots for even one more second!
The last mile seemed to stretch on forEVER, but we finally made it back to our rafts, made camp, and whipped up some dinner in time for us to settle in to sleep by 10pm. It was only a full 17 hour day of strenuous hiking and climbing!
That may not seem like much for some mountaineers out there, but I'm damn proud of myself and Arthur!

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Day 7 - Rafting & Going Home

Alarms at 6am got us up and moving early! We had our rafts in the water by 8am and were making our way downriver.
We felt like total badasses with our mountaineering axes lashed to the bows of our boats, the only safe place for 'em!
Ashley and I, having never paddled this river, were a little worried initially at the number of rock gardens and portages we were forced to make due to fallen trees across the river. We seemed to be doing much more butt scooting and carrying of laden rafts than actual paddling! But as we got further downriver the portages and rock gardens became more and more spaced out, allowing us to enjoy the paddling more.
In classic Andre fashion, I went a little too minimal and only brought my mountaineering boots and flip flops, so all my poor feet had for protection were neoprene socks. These were wholly inadequate to the task of carrying Chiquita (my raft) through the portages and walking through the riverbed to get through shallow parts. With many explatives and a single birkenstock miraculously in my size harvested from the riverside, however, I persevered.
One long section of paddling in the middle of the river was easily the highlight: Ice blue water, enjoyable rapids, lush rainforest on either side, and some exciting trees to duck under and/or weave around made it an absolute delight!
After about 3 or 4 hours we started seeing more and more people on the riverbanks, a sign that we were finally getting close to civilization! We even passed some Forest Service employees rooting around the river doing some kind of wildlife survey. We paddled upriver to keep in place while we chatted with them briefly about our trip. One of them looked like a ghostbuster with this drysuit and crazy device strapped to her back, probably for vaccumming up fish or something!
Arthur got to see a massive, three foot salmon in the river, but he and I got to see an otter frolicking around the water hunting fish! Ashley was, sadly, somewhat lacking in the crazy wildlife sightings on the river, or maybe she saw something that I'm not aware of, I hope that's the case!
Both regrettably soon, and not soon enough at the same time, we reached the big oxbow that announced our proximity to the trailhead, and we were greeted by Jeremy relaxing on the beach in his camp chair! We'd finally made it!
We had a little gear yardsale to dry out our sopping wet things and caught up with Jeremy on how his time in the front country went and told him about our wild trip in turn. After we'd taken our time to freshen up in the river, dried our our things enough to put them in the car, and I'd donated my single birkenstock to a kid who's flip flop was sequestered by the river, we piled into the car and made our way to the nearest Chick-Fil-A to engorge ourselves on some hot, non-dehydrated food!

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Epilogue

To borrow words from Arthur, this was easily the hardest 4 days of recreation I've ever had.
It was so awesome to have to work that hard and still get up every morning ready for more!
I'm really proud of all of us for rising to the occasion every time a challenge presented itself, and of me and Arthur on our second summit attempt for making smart decisions in the mountains, pushing ourselves in tricky situations, and making the correct but hard decision to turn back when we did.
While it's a bummer we didn't summit, we made smart decisions up there and we are certainly better for it! If we had had one more day, we might have pushed ourselves to summit and almost certainly made it up, gotten back to basecamp late, then been able to hike out the following day. As it was, I'm proud of us for having gotten as high as we did and making the hard decision to turn back.

As I'm finishing up writing this post on September 2nd, 2025, I'm just a week out from an adventure that's arguably even bigger and more committing than this one! I've been training for this next trip for months and made one four day trip to North Carolina to prepare.
I'm a little nervous, but very glad that I had this experience in Washington that seriously demonstrated how far I've come in my ability to suffer outdoors. I'm so excited to apply myself in this next trip the same way I did in Washington, and only time will tell if my team and I are up to the task...

As for what that next trip is, you'll have to wait until I make the post in late September/early October to find out!
Until then :)