Bailey Range Traverse,  Olympic National Park,  Jul 26, 2007 - Aug 1, 2007     page 41 / 97

We came to the last basin, just west of Stephen Peak perhaps by 4:30PM. Our elevation here was roughly 4500 feet. Having discussed the traverse with a couple of other climber friends prior to our trip, I had a notion of what to anticipate. We hiked around the ridge, gaining elevation as we did so. I expected to climb high, perhaps as high as 5500 feet, then follow an open slope and meadows all the way down to Cream Lake. Instead, we never got over 5000 feet, then the “trail,” headed down the hill in a series of switchbacks. One friend said these switchbacks culminated in slide alder, mud and a generally messy area, well down the hill. We began the descent, but were concerned when we had gotten down to 4500 feet. We had been advised that it might work to traverse east, off this poor trail, to avoid the muddy conditions below. We finally decided to do this. Unfortunately, this took us into some nasty slide alder.

We spent several minutes crossing through this mess, and across a small creek. We continued through more slide alder, noting our GPS location, as we did so. Cream lake was less than half a mile to the southeast, but could not be seen through the trees and brush. We came to a larger streambed, filled with snow. We crossed it and briefly re-entered the alder again. The effort was getting us nowhere and we were using loads of energy. The map indicated that we were too low to make it past a bench ahead. This route was not going to work. It was nearly 7:00PM with little progress being made. I certainly did not want to be crawling around in the alder in the dark. Though we had plenty of daylight left, we decided to bivouac. We would not make it to Cream Lake tonight, but would seek shelter, and continue in the morning.

We backtracked to the snowfield that we had crossed, and found a small patch in a nearby meadow flat enough for one person to sleep. After a bit of “meadow modification,” which I normally do not condone, we had made the area large enough for our little tent to be perched. I was so tired that I was nearly sick. I had a cup of soup and went to bed. Tom nibbled on a bit of trail food, but had no hot meal either.