Lena Lake, The Brothers — Saturday, May. 27, 2006

Olympic Peninsula > Hood Canal

We had a lovely Memorial Day overnight to The Brothers. Trail #810 to Lower Lena Lake is in excellent shape. The water level is quite high at the lake itself--enough to submerge many of the campsites under a couple of feet of water. Trail #821 up Lena Creek is in less than perfect condition. A series of blow-downs early on makes the going slow, but things improve along the way (there are a couple of additional blow-downs and some muddy washouts that are spawning social side trails). About 1/2 mile from Lena Forks camp, the trail becomes almost continual snow, but is easy to follow. At Lena Forks camp the creek can be crossed on a large log about 30 yards beyond the fork. The camp is at least 80 percent snow-covered, but there were enough patches of bare ground to accomodate most of the campers. The climbing route up The Brothers is in very good shape and route-finding is straightforward. There are good steps kicked almost the entire way from ""the nose"" to the summit block. All climbers appear to be detouring around the hourglass. At the top of the upper couloir, climbers should be sure to bear right toward the true summit. (We stupidly followed tracks to the left and topped out on a rocky false summit just to the west of the true summit. Had to backtrack a bit to get back on route.) The upper couloir has one steep section of snow; the summit block itself has some unfortunate loose rock. It was too cloudy for views from the top. But we rekindled our spirits with glissading. There's a steep glissade path from the summit block down to the hourglass. Another, more sensible, glissade from below the hourglass to the bottom of ""the nose"" just above a tributary to the creek.