Mountain Rescue! Twice Within One Mile!

Adventures on the Bailey Range in the Olympic Mountains

I suspect many hikers and most mountain climbers think about being rescued. Then we dismiss it as someone’s dumb, or not, bad luck.

So who gets rescued twice barely a mile apart, on the north side of Mt. Ferry and then on the south shoulder, on the Bailey Range Traverse in Olympic National Park? Three years apart, almost to the day.

At 64 and 55 Terry and I had sworn off mountain climbing to take on extreme hiking and here we were stuck, day four on the Bailey Range Traverse, some call the local Mt. Everest of hiking.

After an all-time fine four nights on the Skyline Trail, Terry returned again from Maryland. We planned for a year this insane 7-night loop over Mt. Olympus, including the Bailey Range Traverse. Not so fast, boys.

A quick trail description of the Bailey Range Traverse:

You will descend steep gullies on loose rock sometimes kicking hard steps over late summer snow bridges, climb back up to an exposed side hill, cross an avalanche chute, sometimes freshly scoured, obliterating the trail, continuous exposure to a drop-off of hundreds to thousands of feet at your right elbow – for three days; the other days route finding, crossing several passes, often snow covered, miles from a rain forest, wind, fog and rain always possible at 5,000 feet. Bad weather is born and raised here, and quickly grows up. Climbing experience strongly advised. You will descend and ascend steep dirt cliffs and hard snow with extreme exposure. Figure six nights, 40-50 miles, 20 of them tough.

Miss one faded trail marker and you are quickly l-o-s-t. That’s us.

So here we sit. 0ur tent perched high in a boulder field, a huge left-over mound of hard snow thirty by fifty feet at our camp site. Terry is going blind in one eye and we are not sure where we lost the path, somewhere below us. Mt. Olympus is directly opposite us, to the west and if you are not injured and stuck, there are some fine views, the Hoh River four thousand feet below makes a silver ribbon as it winds to the ocean. Clouds roil up the Hoh Valley each evening, better than any movie.

I lifted up head-size stones to make a twelve feet wide and eight feet tall S0S on the snow field. You can see it for miles …if you happen to be flying up a remote dead end ravine in the heart of the Olympic National Park in good weather…

This had not been a good day for us. The going from our third camp at 11 Bull Basin to the base of Stephen Arm had been long and difficult. The first big ravine to cross was treacherously slick from the rain and a long piece of snow finger bridged a stream. We crawled under the snow to see if it would hold us and then singly we crossed, a steep ascent then an ugly active avalanche chute (goats above), then we made the absolute wrong turn at a misplace cairn and days before we got  to it, this grand circuit to make a loop and climb Mt. Olympus was over. Hard lessons follow. Added insult, I dropped my partner’s new NIKON into a river and the camera card with 127 hi res images all lost before we saw them.

After three days we tossed down the SOS rocks and tried to find our lost trail. Two teenage hikers found us first and we four had the most sublime meadow camp near Lake Billy Everett at about 5,000′. Early the next morning, we attempted to climb out but Terry and I decided to descend to camp and let the boys run for help. They earned Red Cross Hero’s Awards for their speed and bravery, for pressing on in an ugly mountain rain storm.

The white foot pad on the side the rescue helicopter the next morning is the indelible moment in this first mountain rescue. I stared down at it and hesitated thinking, ‘I don’t need a ride home. If I had food, I can be back to my car in four days’. I could not leave Terry so I climbed aboard and 21 minutes and nine days later we flew from the meadow below Mt. Ferry on the Bailey Range Traverse to the Port Angeles airport.

Terry flew home and after many surgeries could not get his eyes back to hiking shape. Consequences. Reminder: A simple fall on your butt in a steep gully in the Bailey Range can end your mountain time.

The second rescue.

After two more attempts to complete the 50-mile Bailey Range Traverse in the nearby Olympic National Park, and despite Terry MacDonald’s career-ending fall there, I wanted to return to finish it.

Going solo at age 70+was ruled too great a family risk, so I connected with a hiker from Maine who came to hike ONP every summer, 24 times. We agreed to go together, with separate permits and agreed to stay together until we reached an escape route, at the Scott-Ludden saddle, about 4 days in.

Within three days, and after losing two additional days in a route-finding misunderstanding, my partner was going too slowly to ever make it out. We decided to cut it short, already on short rations and headed for an escape route, 26 miles to our car or complete the traverse in two days, then hike out, a total of 32 miles. We choose the escape route, via the Scott-Ludden saddle. A few hours later, we reached a short but precarious dirt down-climb from Mt. Ferry, my partner sat and refused to continue. I told the rangers on his cell phone he was physically and emotionally spent. And hungry.

He called for a helicopter, would not budge and two days later two very disgruntled rangers hiked in, assisted him down the cliff (three minutes). The rangers took over carrying his gear that I was not already carrying. Figuring there was no way to help and an extra mouth to feed, I went on.

I descended Crisler’s Ladder, ascended the steepest dirt of my life, reached the Ludden trail, stopped and kissed it. Out of food and water, I left my partner’s gear I had been carrying, left a note to the rangers and switchbacked down to Whiskey Bend in a very dark forest, down Long Ridge, the Elwha River, calling from below, a 22 mile day.  I was home in Bremerton at 4 AM. My wife and I back to the Elwha horse trail head by 5 PM.

My partner was unable to proceed down the next morning so horses  were sent up to carry him down, 12 miles or more. He had simply tried to do too much. He had a great heart for the mountains. We drove him to Winslow for a ferry to Seattle, then his long airplane ride home.  

So, all good planning and serious training done, we go into the mountains and someone falls on their butt in a steep gully and irrevocably damages his retina. Bad luck.
We go again and one runs out of gas and calls for help.

Bad luck? Bad planning? Arrogance? Ignorance? Or just good old fashion vanity?

No one brags about being rescued; lives are at risk, resources consumed, people inconvenienced, wives shaken.

We ask ourselves if it is worth it.

And go back in again.