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Basic Glacier Climb - Mount Olympus/Blue Glacier

Turned the team around just below the last part of snow dome.

Annora Ayer Annora Ayer
August 02, 2023
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • I won't reiterate what Travis Prescott and Mike McIntosh have already said about the route on their excellent trip reports (go read them if you have not).  I will say that the way up snow dome now has more ice showing.

We tried a north west variation around snow dome, but the ice wraps pretty far around now, so the traverse that way would be longer than taking the left traverse, has a worse run out, and may still cross ice.

Our team had some folks that were having trouble with the terrain across the lower blue glacier and the moderate slopes up to just below this step, and I was not comfortable with bringing them up either the ice or the traverse to the left (which now also crosses ice patches).  

If you have a team with good footwork and you warn them ahead of time, you can certainly still make it work.

A note on parking: if you are showing up to the parking lot on the weekend, arrive at least before 8am.  Once the lot is full (it was completely full by 8:30), they only let a car in when a car comes out, so you could be stuck waiting at the gate for some time.  Even when we came out (on a Tuesday), the lot was completely full.