THE OLYMPIC COUNTRY 
135 
long to the main body of the mountain. It is difficult to esti- 
mate the thickness of this ice cap. At the close of summer, when 
it is thinnest, there are ])laces where it has the appearance of 
being at least 500 feet thick. It is built up many additional feet 
in thickness by the storms of winter, to be correspondingly melted 
away again by the succeeding warm summer months. The 
Queets, Hoh, and Solduck rivers head in mount Olympus, and 
Higley and Tunnel creeks, branches of the Elwha, have their 
sources in an ice-field two miles long and three-fourths of a mile 
wide close to the northeast end of Olympus. Tunnel creek has 
formed a beautifully arched tunnel 20 feet high and 40 feet wide 
(in summer), through which it flows for two and one-half miles 
under an accumulation of ice that fills the gorge to a depth of 
100 to 300 feet. These accumulations of ice are very numerous 
among the higher peaks all through the range. 
As for scenery, perched on one of the numerous accessible 
peaks you are surrounded by towering, sky-piercing pinnacles 
and ragged, rocky ice-capped ridges that are plowed and har- 
rowed by slides of rock and ice and chiseled and worn by ages 
of rushing water, mantled with snow and garlanded with great 
patches of roses and daisies and dainty mountain flowers and 
gowned with dense, dark evergreen forests, reaching far down 
into cavernous depths of canyon and ravine, across which on 
some oppo.site mountain side is rushing down from its icy foun- 
tain head a tumultuous mountain torrent which finally dashes 
over a lofty precipice apd is lost in a veil of mist in the valley 
below. Away to the west is seen the ocean with its lazily rolling 
billows, the dark trail of a steamer’s smoke, and the white sails 
of a ship just showing above the horizon. To the east lie Hood’s 
canal and Puget sound, with their bays and arms and inlets 
si)read out like silver leaf on a carpet of green. Beyond rise the 
dark, wooded slopes and snow-clad summits of the Cascades, 
with grand old Rainier standing guard to the southeast and the 
majestic Baker to the northeast. 
flakes Cushman, Crescent, and Quinault are all of considerable 
e.\tent and great dei)th. At (iuinault lake, nearly 20 miles from 
the ocean, the boom of the breakers on the lujach is plainly 
heard during and after a storm, but the sound comes from the 
opposite direction to the ocean, being rellecti'd from the slopes of 
mount Frances on the east. For 25 miles north from the mouth 
of Cray’s harbor is a stretch of broad, smooth, hard, sand beach 
reaching to [joint Crenville. From [loint Crenville to cape 
