Bailey Range Traverse, Mount Olympus — Thursday, Jul. 10, 2025

We hiked a variation of the Bailey Range Traverse this past weekend in a party of three. There are a number of trip reports for the traverse and for Olympus so I won't cover anything too exhaustively. However, I thought I'd leave some notes for the variation that we did and the things that we would do differently.

This is a really difficult and very technical trip, with lots of high consequence terrain and a lot of off-route navigation required. That being said, the terrain is stunning, you get to enjoy all the biomes in the Olympics, from the rainforest to the high alpine, and the solitude is profound.

• Day 1: Sol Duc to Stephen Lake (~15 miles, +5400ft, ~12 hours)
• Day 2: Stephen Lake to Hume Glacier (~12 miles, +5000ft, ~12 hours)
• Day 3: Hume Glacier to Mount Olympus to Lewis Meadows (~15 miles, +5000ft, a long time)
• Day 4: Lewis Meadows to Sol Duc (~14 miles, +5400ft)

Road in

It doesn't get any better - paved road into Sol Duc the whole way?! Absolutely spoiled!

Notes

Day 1

We ended up hiking mostly in clouds the first day which was unfortunate as we got absolutely soaked by foliage. The trail is in decent condition and readily found to about ~Boston Charlie's Camp. Between this camp and Eleven Bull Basin (at approximately 47.88498, -123.64756) we found a pretty severe gully washout that required cutting steps in dirt with our ice axes to safely navigate. Doable but not fun. It didn't seem easy to traverse high or low - possibly there are big enough boulders to do a quick rap into the gully. Also it's possible the rain made the conditions more dangerous and it wouldn't be that bad normally.

The ascent over the pass and down to Stephen Lake Camp was AMAZING. Clouds opened up over the ridge and we rambled downhill to a dry ridge on the east side of the lake. Although the descent was relatively easy, it did take quite a bit longer than we expected. The basin is huge and there were big avalanche gullies to cross.

Day 2

This day ended up being much longer and harder than expected. Entirely off trail, we lost a lot of time navigating through brush and challenging terrain. Be prepared and start early is my advice.

We followed the ridge between Ferry and Pulitzer, below Childs, and through Bear Pass. This was all relatively straightforward but not super fast to traverse.

Dropping down off Bear Pass (insane views, amazing waterfalls, all-time classic meadows!) we elected to cross the Queets River and go low, instead of staying high on the traditional traverse. We were hoping to avoid some sketchy sidehilling and ravine/gully crossings. I think we were successful? But it wasn't great. We aimed for a bench/meadow around (47.78527, -123.61189) which was glorious and probably a great place to camp. We followed what seemed to be elk and bear trails down to a crossing of the river low at around (47.77946, -123.61870). From there we clambered up the steep river bank, through thick trees for about 50-100 vertical feet until it leveled off around (47.77995, -123.62159).  We skirted the toe of a ridge and came out onto a rocky slide around (47.78744, -123.62627) which quickly turned into a bad slide alder-bash for a hundred+ feet until we gained the main rockslide/creek. Hitting the creekbed earlier (maybe around 47.78858, -123.62651) would maybe have been a nicer option to reduce bushwhacking. The creekbed made for easy rock hopping to the cliff band below Humes Glacier. The route up the band IS NOT up the scree field on the right - that field is loose and heinous and scary (ask me how I know). Instead, it seems most people follow a class 3 scramble high on the left and drop back down to the lake at the base of the glacier. 

Worth noting that there is obviously significant rockfall here - we saw and heard ice and rock all evening. We camped quite a bit high and away from the lake shore for this reason (and for warmth reasons). Although it was windier, it seems much safer.

Day 3/4

Nothing super eventful to report here. The glaciers and passes are all in good shape. We were able to take the early season route (4th of July Pass) up Olympus. The only notable thing we didn't account for here was that there was a huge traffic jam below the single pitch of climbing at the summit. Lots of groups taking a very long time, seemed like a lot of folks not super comfortable rappelling off the summit block. We got to the base at 10:30am and didn't get to the summit until 1:30pm! That was a tough wait. Long slog downhill to Lewis Meadows after a big day of snow travel.

Last day we had a bit of a last minute change of plans after a group member got pretty bad blisters from traveling with wet feet for 3 days in a row. Two members ended up hiking out Hoh Rainforest trail (flat, 11 miles) and the I hiked up to the High Divide and down to Sol Duc (not flat, 14 miles) with a lighter pack to get the car and shuttle it to the Hoh Rainforest trailhead. This plan ended up working really well, although mostly because two friendly travelers gave my friends a ride from Hoh to Forks, saving loads of time (the car backup to get into Hoh was 2+ hours...). 

Side note -  the rangers are not super interested in people hitchhiking out of the busy trailheads, which is totally understandable, but we did talk with them before attempting to get a ride. 

Other notes

We all carried bear spray and bear cans (cans required, spray highly highly recommended) and although we didn't see any bears we saw loads of bear sign, including paw prints in mud and lots of poop. We did come across a small group of elk hiking up to the Hume Glacier and startled many a grouse (babies galore!).