Pat crossing the Cat Walk Photo Courtesy of the Author

The mountains of Olympic National Park possess a special kind of mystique. Draped in delicate ferns and towering old growth forest, shrouded in fog from the Pacific Ocean, they seem the perfect setting for a fairy tale. Trail names and popular attractions reveal the palpable magic. There is the “Valley of the Silent Men” and “Sol Duc,” where local legend has it two dragons fought to possess the land and lost, then cried their tears into what is now know as the Sol Duc hot springs. Even Mt. Olympus, the tallest mountain in the park, is named after a mighty Greek god.

Unlike peaks in Washington's Cascade range, which can be seen from highways, most of the Olympic peaks are hidden from view, buried deep in the square-shaped park that dominates the Olympic Peninsula. One road circumnavigates the park, with dirt roads venturing inward infrequently, like spokes on a wheel. Climbing these mountains requires driving many miles along one of these roads, hiking at least a dozen miles through forest, scrambling up thorny thickets and blown down trees, across glaciers and rock fields and finally creeping up steep snow and rock slopes to the summit.

The Bailey Range Traverse is no exception. Starting from the northeast part of the park, climbers drive to the end of Sol Duc campground and hike a full day before entering the range, which spans 64 miles in the pattern of a backwards “C,” then ends at the southwest side of the park near Quinault. Eight low summits make up the range, with 6,995-foot Mt. Carrie being the highest, adding up to a 17,500-foot week if you climb them all. But the real gem of the hike is the constant view of Mt. Olympus to the west. Nowhere else in the park can you hike for so long and see this remote mountain in such glaciated, sparkling detail.

The Bailey Range is a spectacular and strenuous trip, but not nearly as technical or daunting as other remote cross-country routes in Washington, such as the Picket Range or the Ptarmigan Traverse in the North Cascades. Still, crampons and ice axes are necessary to cross a glacier or two and navigation and route-finding skills are a must. I'd already done the Pickets and Ptarmigan traverses and was looking forward to a pleasant climb across the Bailey Range. A third traverse would make a nice capstone achievement, a climber's hat trick.

I never even made it out of the driveway on my first attempt at the Bailey. The week that my husband Roy and I scheduled the climb in August 2004 set records for summer rainfall. We watched the weather website miserably, with our freeze-dried food, sleeping bags and gear laid out on the floor. The freezing level dropped from 12,000 feet to 4,000 in a matter of hours. We delayed our departure by a day, then another and then a third. Then it was Monday and, completely dejected, we trudged back to work rather than waste vacation days on a rainstorm.

This year we tried again. Setting aside the first week of August, we crossed our fingers. Roy was enthusiastic about travelling light and tried to help me see that sleeping in a tent no longer cut it as a real outdoor experience. “You still have walls between you and the night,” he said. “I want to live outdoors. I want to see the stars.” He bought bivouac sacks and promised that the star gazing would be worth any discomfort we might experience. I secretly feared the gods that ruled weather in the Olympics might hear of this arrogance and dispatch another rainstorm to spoil on our plans again.

But the rains never came. The forecast promised sun and heat the entire week and that's what we got. It was a good thing, because the guide books we were using were out of date and we needed good visibility to navigate several spots along the way.

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