Day 5: Had originally planned to climb Cameron and head to Wolf Pass, but we're now a day behind and have had quite enough bush whacking and scree traversing for a bit. We stop to talk briefly with the buddhists camped at the base of the meadows (they had prayer flags on their tent lines) and another hour of bushwhacking brings us out to the upper Dosiwallops trail. From there it was 9 pretty easy miles out the valley. We've noticed an interesting phenomenon with the bugs: It's mostly flies below 5000 ft and all mosquitos above 5500 ft, and you're lucky enough to get both between 5000 and 5500. The hike out was low, and varying degrees of flies. At least the afternoon was partly cloudy. At one point, sitting in a gully pumping water from a stream and actually NOT swatting flies, it was downright pleasant! The stream was keeping the air temp a good 15-20 degrees cooler than ambient. Should have stayed there for the night. But no, it was time for (ominous music) the Constance Pass Trail. The Olympics tend to have two main types of trails; one type gradually wanders many miles up a river valley. The other type goes straight up the side of the valley to the ridge. The Constance Pass Trail is the epitome of this second type. Starting at 2400 ft, it climbs to 6500 ft in less than 4 miles, at a pretty consistent, relentless grade. Harald has named it, and rightly so "Constant Pain Trail". We should have been in good shape with light(er) packs by this point, but it was also 4pm, and we were both a bit burned from the day, so it was a long slow trudge. On the way up It was interesting to see the differences in vegetation by this point, most of the way across the Olympics. Quinalt is lush, a rain forest, and sports absolutely huge Cedars. The central Hayden pass area had also been very lush alpine meadow and evergreen forest. Here on the eastern side, it is quite dry, the soil is very dry, the underbrush has changed to Rhododendron plants, and the trees are much smaller.

Around 5800 ft we'd had enough and camped by the last water available in sunnybrook meadows. The mosquitos were bad one more time (had been hoping to leave them as we reached the drier area of the Olympics), and we were exhausted. But as the night fell, the good little mosquitos went to bed, so we did indeed get one night of sitting around outside the tent, enjoying the stars, and hot cocoa laced with Rumple Minze liquor while making pan baked brownies on the camp stove.

Day 6: During the usual mid-night pee break, I'd seen 2 deer (Elk?) wander near the camp. As I shone the headlamp around towards the deer, I also picked up two eyes - predator eyes, on the nearby ridge. Hmmmm. wonder what that was.

Another Gorgeous day. Mosquitos weren't too bad in the morning, and we got an earlier start so the last 700 ft of grind up to the ridge was in the shade. Clearing the ridge we could see out towards Puget sound, which, to our surprise, was completely socked in with low clouds. Rainier floated over the sea of white & smog and we were alone above it all. The ridge drops down to Constance Pass at 5800 ft, and then to Home lake, where we met a couple talkative guys who wondered if the mosquitos were any better on the other side of the ridge. We continued on to the Boulder Basin camp, where there was a rather elaborate set of tents setup, big steel bear boxes and a laundry line with real towels on it. Errrwhat??? Turned out to be a teenage trail work party which we found most of the way up to Marmot pass. It was blistering hot, without a breath of wind, and the first set of kids were sitting in the shade eating lunch. The second set and the leader were a little ways ahead stockpiling snowballs for an ambush. I wouldn't have minded a few snowballs down the back at all. Clearing the pass we found the wind, and sat enjoying lunch while a strong breeze kept the flies at bay and the temperatures reasonable. Very pleasant at last! It was much tempting to run up Buckhorn, but Gretchen wanted to head home, and my feet were in a fair bit of pain just from the pounding, so out we went, the Marmot Pass trail feeling like a veritable highway.

As I mentioned in the quick summary, it was a trip with full Yin and Yang, could have done without the heat and the bugs of course, but on the brighter side, it didn't rain all the time either.