Bailey Range: Day 1: Boston Charlie's

Well, I had been excited about this trip for quite some time. My dad had stories of him doing the Bailey Range Traverse when he was younger. It sounded exciting, adventurous, and beautiful. We tried to do this hike several years ago, but the snow was just too deep for when we wanted to go. So I planned it for a month later in September when we surely would not run into snow, but we could run into bad weather. We watched the weather and so far, it looked immaculate. We were lucky. So I flew out from Vegas and dad picked me up at the airport.

That night we were packing and the next morning we were to get up and go. We first drove a car over to the Elwha where we would be coming out and left it there. Laura gave us a ride over to Sol Duc where the start of our hike began. We had to hike up above Sol Duc Falls and up into the High Divide near Heart Lake. Strangely, I had already done this hike 11 years earlier while a junior in college. The day was just perfect and we moved steadily uphill. I was excited to be back in the lush forest with the big trees and the moss growing thickly next to the trail.

Our plan, though, was to not stay in the trees for long. Soon we were moving up into the high mountain meadows. Here we had our permit checked by a volunteer backcountry ranger. I told her that I did the same thing in Zion and Dad had some bad joke for her about doing this hike before she was born. I told him that we hated comments like that. Thus she didn't talk to us for too long. As we hiked along, many hikers and backpackers would stop to converse with us. When we told them that we were going into the Bailey's the common expression was "Be safe".

This made me kind of wonder how difficult of a trip we were embarking upon. The trail was definitely not that quiet and as we left Heart Lake, it seemed like there were folks all around. From Heart Lake we continued on an old trail that would eventually dead end in a steep climb up was called the Cat Walk since it hugged the slopes of Cat Peak. I heard that this was the steepest part of the trip. It turned out to be steep, but not horrible. There were places of exposure, but nothing that could not be managed even with a full pack on. I left Dad to make his way up as I hiked out to Boston Charlie's camp.

When I made it to Boston Charlie's, it was pretty distinguishable by a small flat spot and a small pool of water. I dropped the pack and looked back for Dad. He was moving along pretty well and soon made it to camp. We set up here for the night looking down a beautiful valley below us. If we climbed to the edge of the other side of the saddle, we could see Mt. Olympus from there. This was a pretty fantastic spot. We assumed we had it all to ourselves, but then another young guy from Seattle came wandering in about an hour from dark. He wanted to set up camp for the night and we were fine with it. After thinking about it a bit, he decided to try to make his way over to Eleven Bull Basin. We were fine with this, too. He would be the last person we would see until the last day of the trip.