Lisa's pictures in Olympic National Park inspired me to post a panorama of three pictures I took on a recent backpack trip of seven days. This is my first effort at stitching pictures together (using GIMP). I retouched the sky to make it uniform, but the rest is untouched.
This is a view of the northern half of the Bailey Range, in Olympic National Park. From the left edge of the picture to the right edge is about 6 miles. The High Divide, where Lisa was hiking, is the ridge that extends off the left edge of this picture.
After a late start on the first day, we hiked up the Soleduck valley to camp at a small lake near Appleton Pass, near the second bump on the left skyline. It took us most of the second day to get from our camp, to just past the third bump (Cat Peak), camping at a little nook with water on the slope that ascends to Mt. Carrie (the first peak on the left with a snow patch near the top). The third day was spent traversing the section from just beyond Cat Peak to Cream Lake, which is at about the middle of the picture, but is hidden behind the hill in the left foreground. The distance is only about five miles, but you spend a lot of time route-finding and crossing several steep gullies that descend from the ridge.
After leaving Cream Lake, we hiked/scrambled up a narrow steep canyon that evenually opened up into the relatively flat area at the lower right of this picture. We spent the fourth and fifth days wandering around in this area, which has at least a dozen lakes of varying sizes in many small basins
.
The terrain is very rugged. In some places there are trails, but they are as likely to be made by animals as by humans. This route is not for the faint of heart, as there are no maintained trails, and in many places, no trails at all. Although we didn't have to cross any snow on our traverse, we took ice axes, because the exit from the middle of the Bailey Range requires a steep descent down a dirt and gravel slope. If you slip, it could ruin your whole day, or worse.
We were lucky enough to hit a seven-day window of excellent weather, which is not a sure thing after Labor Day in the Olympics. Most days the temps were in the 70s, so we hiked in shorts the whole time. All in all, an excellent trip!
