Mt. Gladys

Jacqueline gave my dad and I one night to go backpacking. It wasn't much, but we would have to take it as she did not want me gone for very long. I let Dad do the trip planning as we were going to be doing the trip around Olympic National Park near where he lived in Port Angeles. He chose a trip out to the Flapjack Lakes in the Staircase Area. This involved a drive down the 101 to the trailhead right near the Ranger Station. There was really only one choice of trails to head up from there. It went right up the Skokomish River. There was another on the other side of the river, but that is not where we were headed as we took the junction right near Spike Camp. From there the trail continued uphill gaining quite a bit of elevation quickly. There were quite a few people out on the trail below Spike Camp, but once we were on the trail heading up toward the Flapjack Lakes, we only ran into a few other people. Dad began to feel as if he was slowing me down, so he encouraged me to continue on up to the lakes where he would meet me up there. I was happy to do that and I immediately put some distance between him and me.

As I was rolling along, I came around a corner nearly face to face with a black bear cub. The cub looked way more scared of me than I was of him. He immediately took off and within seconds had scrambled quite a distance up a nearby tree. My first thought was where is mom. I moved quickly to get out of the situation while also looking for the mother. I found her further on in the woods with a second cub. They seemed a safe distance away, so I snapped a picture of the cub in the tree before getting out of the area. By the time Dad made it there, the bears were gone and he never even saw them.

It was not long before I made it to the lakes. Dad followed getting there not too much long after I got there. We chose a campsite and set up the tent. I did not stay long though and instead I took the opportunity to head up to the Gladys Divide. It was a trail, but an unmaintained one that went up to the pass in between Mt. Gladys and Mt. Cruiser. This was where the mountains were as most of the trip so far had been in the forest. The trail climbed pretty rapidly, but there were great views over to Mt. Cruiser and Mt. Lincoln. I enjoyed just being up here as this was a short trip, so I did not expect too much from the two days.

The fairly good trail led me all the way to the Gladys Divide that gave me a chance to peer down below into the basin that became the Hamma Hamma River. I thought about how it would be a lot of fun to hike on through here down into that drainage and come out the other side. Instead, I followed a faint trail that continued to lead me to the summit of Mt. Gladys. This took a bit of negotiating through some rocky sections and tree covered slopes, but the way was not too difficult. It was a class 2 scramble at most, but it still felt good to be standing on the summit of a peak. I wished that Dad could be here and I knew that I would encourage him to give it a shot in the morning.

I enjoyed the views from the summit which gave me a chance to see many other rugged peaks of the Olympics. For such a small mountain range, the Olympics sure had many challenging summits. There was nowhere left to go at this point than to continue back down the mountain, to the trail, and back to spend the night at the Flapjack Lakes. We played some cribbage and read our books. In the morning, Dad did get up early and hiked up to the divide. I was glad that he made the trip up there. The hike back down the trail to the trailhead was uneventful. Nothing quite as cool as the view from Mt. Gladys. Defintely worth the time and energy it took to get to the top of that fairly easy summit trip.