Distance: 11.5 mi.
Elevation Gain: 6500 ft.
Rodrigo and I had high hopes for the long weekend but ended up struggling to make a decision based on a poor Saturday forecast and seemingly always changing forecasts for the next two days. Eventually the forecast shaped up some and actually looked better to the west and north. We ended up deciding between going up to Whistler or going to the Olympics, but ultimately we decided to just do a day trip in the Olympics on Sunday.
We got the first ferry to Bainbridge at 6:10 am and made our way up the long road along the Dungeness River and then the short spur road up to the Maynard Burn Trailhead. We geared up and started hiking at 8:45. We started up the Tyler Peak Way trail for the ascent, the obviously steeper trail from the parking area. It seemed that this trail had some recent maintenance done on it, as it was in very good shape for such a steep trail.
We booked it all the up to the upper meadows in short order where the trail eventually faded into the grass. We decided to turn right and head straight up the hill toward Tyler Peak and eventually found a climbers pass once we were on the ridge. It was easy travel with a few minor ups and downs to get to the summit. There was one tiny snow patch we had to cross, but other than that it was bone dry. We arrived at the summit a little after 10, enjoyed some snacks, and enjoyed some great views of the Royal Basin peaks, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Vancouver Island.
We backtracked along the ridge and continued up a small little peak, called Peak B in peakbagger. It looked steep but we never needed to use our hands to get to the top. We then descended down the other side of the peak and continued along the ridge toward Baldy.
We mostly followed the trial along the ridge but occasionally needed to bypass to avoid snow or ocasionally walked on the snow. We were still wearing out trail runners even though we had our boots in our packs. We could see that most of our route up and over Baldy was in fact bald, so we did what we could to avoid the snow. The rest of the way up Baldy was quite easy. It was 11:30 at this point so we took a bit longer break to enjoy lunch and a beer before we headed southwest off the peak toward Gray Wolf Ridge.
This descent was a bit steeper and we mostly plunge steeped down loose scree. We had to go over one more minor bump before heading up Gray Wolf. The ridge was pretty easy but there was one steeper part that consisted of minor scrambling and loose wet scree. We finally made it up to the upper ridge where we had to cross some snow again. It looked steep, but once we got a good view we realized it was just a short crossing on low angle slopes to some more rocks. We did eventually need to briefly ascend a briefly steeper snow slope, so we put on the boots we had carried all this way. The snow was quite good for steps so we still didn’t use our ice axes. We were quickly at the top just before 1 pm.
We had another snack break and had our second beer. We retraced our steps back up and over Baldy and back down the north ridge a few hundred feet until we encountered the Maynard Burn Trail. We switched back to our trail runners for the steep trail descent. This trail had a few logs down over it, but overall we made really quick time back down to the car by 3:30.
We did the long drive back to Poulsbo where we grabbed some slices of pizza at the Sound Brewing Restaurant. $3 beers on Sunday and they always have $8 for a slice of pizza and a beer. Pretty good deal. We had to wait a while for the 7:15 ferry. It was good to get back to the Olympics and get a taste of some mostly snow free hiking.
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Recommended brew: Matchless Brewing Precision Guesswork
Gear Used:
- Aluminum crampons (not used)
- Gaiters (not used)
- Glacier glasses
- GPS
- Mountaineering boots
- Steel ice axe (not used)
- Trail runners
- Trekking poles
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