Hoh River, Mt. Olympus

The Hoh trail is in
great shape, a good thing as it is 18.2 miles long! It is hard to get lost in the maze around the visitor area, but the crowds may cause confusion. We can vouch that the Lewis Meadow camp is very pleasant, out on the sandbar. The trail starts gaining elevation after the stunning bridge over the Hoh, and continues past the last ranger station at 17 miles. The way gets steep and rocky to the moraine, and the descent to the Blue Glacier is a controlled rock slide. We spent a couple nights at Camp Pan (Camp Pain), which for some reason, none of the 4 Rangers we talked to seemed to know anything about (all the rangers were amazingly clueless about climbing routes and conditions). Too bad- the camp has spectacular sunrises. Us Boealper Eggplants were attempting the summit traverse from the East to West peaks. There is a huge crevasse on the Hoh Glacier around the East Peak that needs to be crossed far to the left- we saw a party try to go straight up and they got skunked. We skipped the East Peak after a long 5.2 scramble up the Middle Peak, with a couple adventures on the way down. The route from the Middle to West Peak can not be discerned from this direction, and we had to go back. The path up the West Peak from Snow Dome is pretty straight forward, until the false summit where the moat is melting into a icy hazardous mess. The snow wall to the summit is strikingly steep, but there is a solid set of steps to slowly ascend and descend. The normal route is probably unreachable due to snow melt, and we worked our way up along the right side, up to 5.6 difficulties. Bring lots of slings and pro- as the summit register said, ""what easy route'!"". Bears were spotted on the way down the Hoh, but none bothered us at the horse camp below Glacier Meadows. We did the last 15.5 miles in 5.5 hours, terrifying the tourists. Oh, my feet.