Through the Olympics With the Mountaineers 149 



THROUGH THE OLYMPICS WITH THE MOUNTAINEERS 



By Marion Randall Parsons 



The Olympic Range occupies a peninsula, about eighty miles 

 wide, which separates Puget Sound from the Pacific, and rises 

 abruptly from the ocean to an altitude of 8,200 feet. Deep 

 glacial canons cut the chain into a series of high, serrated 

 ridges that culminate near Mt. Olympus in several interesting 

 groups of precipitous peaks. Like the Cascade Range, the 

 Olympics have three characteristic zones : dense forests, reach- 

 ing from sea-level to an altitude of about 3,500 feet ; open park 

 country, rising nearly a thousand feet higher; third and high- 

 est, the alpine region, where bold peaks and grandly sculptured 

 ranges of dark metamorphic rock are clothed in perpetual 

 snow. Here living glaciers, some of them five miles long, are 

 still at work carving and beautifying the range. The canons 

 form the most practicable avenues of approach to the high 

 mountains, for the forested areas are not only very steep and 

 rugged, but, owing to the heavy rainfall, are clothed in an 

 almost impenetrable jungle of rank vegetation. The Olympic 

 National Monument, established by President Roosevelt in 

 1909, preserves the region as one of the nation's playgrounds. 



Announcement of an outing through the heart of these little- 

 known mountains brought Appalachian, Mazama and Sierra 

 recruits to join the 1913 outing of the Seattle Mountaineers. 

 The projected trip was a pioneering undertaking, for few 

 parties had hitherto even reached Mt. Olympus and none 

 had been known to cross the range and follow down its west- 

 ern flanks to the Pacific. Much preliminary work was there- 

 fore necessary to ensure the success of the trip. On the west 

 a trail from Lake Queniult to the Low Divide was located and 

 built. On the east the rough trail up the Elwha River was 

 rebuilt and a new trail put through from the Elwha to the 

 Low Divide, where the two ends were joined only three days 

 before we reached that point. 



The outing party, numbering one hundred, assembled at 

 Seattle aboard the steamer "Sol Due" the evening of August 



