| Feb '08 | | | Jul '07 | | Harlow Lakes | May '07 | | | Aug '06 | | | Aug '05 | | |
|
|  | | Location: | Olympic National Park | Start Date: | July 5, 2007 | End Date: | July 8, 2007 | Major Drainage: | Queets River | Minor Drainage: | Harlow Creek | Est. Total Distance: | 25 miles | Est. Elevation Gain: | 5500 feet | Viewed: | 584 times |
|
|
|
|
| | A little background first I suppose... I've been planning this trip for quite a while now. I don't remember when I first decided it was a place I needed to visit. There's something about looking at a map and seeing a couple of blue dots, far from any trails and surrounded by steep ridges, that grabs my attention. These two lakes sit halfway between the South Fork Hoh River and the Queets River, and drain into Harlow Creek. I've heard people call them "Harlow Lakes", and that's how I refer to them now, despite the fact that they're nameless on every map I've seen. I decided several months ago that this was the year to get there.
A few weeks beforehand, not looking forward to doing this one on my own, I convinced a buddy of mine, Ryan, that he needed to go too. He's the only friend I have who still follows me into the unknown and doesn't complain -- so I was glad when his wife said he could go!
| | | | | | Fast forward to day one, July 5, 2007. The best route I could sketch out began on a gated DNR road seven miles from the park boundary. With our packs strapped to our back, and my camera bag on my chest, feeling a little bit too heavy, we got on our bikes and pedaled around the gate, hoping we'd survive. My dad had been using my old bike for a year, so I figured it would work just fine. Mistake. A mile and a half up the road, switching gears, the chain flew off and destroyed the derailleur and some spokes. Not how we wanted to start things off. After some profanities, we stashed our bikes down the bank and marked the spot for our return, and walked five more miles of dusty road, dripping sweat by noon.
| | | | | | We stumbled up the ridge to the park boundary, and followed the top of the ridge up a ways, to avoid dropping into a creek. We began our 1800 foot descent -- the route was good, better than I expected, and we only had a couple small cliffs to deal with. Getting close to the valley, we dropped down into a side-stream gorge for some water -- it was a scorchin day! A waterfall surrounded by lush rainforest foliage made me get out the tripod and waste some time. After a few shots we continued down and soon the ground was flat. We stumbled into a large meadow bordering a very calm Harlow Creek.
| | | | | | We decided to camp here. In the satellite images, it looked like there was a waterfall a ways downstream that I wanted to check out, so we dropped our packs and bushwhacked on. Ry decided to catch a frog... as long as he didn't eat it or anything, that was fine with me haha. We left the little guy behind and soon the sound of whitewater echoed in our ears. The route ahead didn't look good, so we backtracked, crossed the creek and continued down the other side. I was expecting something like a twenty foot waterfall... This was more like a sixty foot drop, and with the surrounding cliffs and vegetation, it was impossible to get a clear shot. We went back up to a smaller ~10 foot falls and jumped in the pool below -- talk about cold! Hiking back upstream, the creek seemed so calm, and we were soon back to camp. After the sun set, we could hear the piercing sound of a cow elk calling as it made it's way around us. It probably hadn't seen any smelly humans before.
| | | | | | | | | Friday morning, we awoke to more blue skies, and it already felt warm. We donned our packs and started upstream. I wanted to go about a mile and a half up the creek before starting up towards the lakes. Soon the banks started to get steeper and I figured we'd better cut into the woods. A well-used elk trail presented itself from nowhere, and up we went. Both the topo quads and satellite images made this portion of the creek look like a mild grade, so I wasn't expecting much. A little ways up, I heard the crashing sound of water again, and said "There must be a waterfall over there. Let's check it out!" Good excuse to drop our packs. Cresting a knoll, I see a cool looking ten foot spill, so I run back to get my tripod. "Holy smokes!" -- more like a ten foot spill on top of a fifty footer. Sweet way to start the morning. Hiking up a little further, the sound intensified again -- "Must be another waterfall!!" to which Ryan says "Aren't we trying to get to a lake?" Hah. There's always time to check out waterfalls This one wasn't very photogenic, but still big enough that I'd think it would show up on a map somewhere. After the third waterfall, I finally agreed to stop taking photos and get to the freakin lake. The brush was getting nasty at this point. Huckleberries and blueberries and devils club and all that fun stuff. But we only had to backtrack once.
| | | | | | Thinking we were about where we needed to climb, we crossed the creek and started up. These ridges get steep fast. It's hard to explain to someone -- and harder to photograph -- just how nasty some of these places are. After gaining 400 feet or so, I see a cliff up ahead to the left... then a cliff up ahead to the right. A gully in between looks passable from below so we continue up. More profanities from me. Ryan says "we can make it up that" -- that's why I talked him into going -- I would've turned around right there had I been alone! Finally after what seemed like ten minutes of hesitating, I decided I could do it if I didn't have my pack on. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't any rock climbing or anything, but rotten rock covered with a couple inches of moss isn't my idea of a good time. I tied our thin little cord to the camera bag on my back, and climbed up about thirty feet, to where I could haul up our packs. I marked this as "NASTY GULCH" on my GPS, and I'll never go that way again (IF I ever go again) I was praying we didn't get cliffed out above and have to backtrack down this route. Someone up in the Valhallas was listening. The angle subsided and the freakin brush got thicker than snot again. Soon we crested a rise and I could see sparkles glistening on the lower lake in front of us.
| | | | | | After the traditional dive in the lake to rid ourselves of sweat and dirt, and a good snack, we felt somewhat beat. "Should we camp here, and just hike up to the bigger lake?" "Nah, let's camp at the bigger lake" More profanities from me. I guess you could say I'm the navigator and he's the motivator, so we're a good team. I didn't think the brush could get any thicker, but as we entered the sub-alpine, it did. Over our heads in places. The skeeters zoned in on us at every rest break, and cobwebs glistened in the corner of my eyes, but we were close. Up a few hundred feet and over a few humps, the lake was waiting. We hit the lake at a perfect spot to camp, as evidenced by a couple bungee cords somebody left there years ago. The shallows seemed to drop off into blackness. How long had it been since a voice broke the silence here, I'll never know. But we'd made it. Ryan went over to the outfall to filter some water, and came running back to tell me there was another sweet waterfall over there. I almost didn't care, but stumbled down anyways! As the sun set, eight ounces of whiskey never tasted better -- the bugs wanted some but we didn't share.
| | | | | | | | | Saturday morning, the sun was beating down before we knew it. At around 9:30, feeling like a train had run us over, we awoke. My original plan called for an ascent of a peak above the lake, but there was no way I had the energy for that. Then Ryan started in with his motivation. More profanities from me. A rocky crag stands guard about a thousand feet above the lake. It looked easy to get to. Yeah right. After scwhackin' our way around the lake, we started to climb. It got steeper and steeper and a cliff band appeared in front of us. We scrambled up a short section of exposed rotten rock. At the top Ryan says "I just realized for the first time in my life that I'm afraid of heights." Yeah, it was good stuff. We gained the ridge, kicked our way up some snow, and broke out on the other side with grand views of the southwest side of the Olys, and I got the photo looking down on the lake that I'd wanted.
| | | | | | We sat there for a while, looking back at the way we'd come. We could see the old logging road way out in the distance, with the deep valley of Harlow Creek between us. At about one o'clock, Ryan says "I think we should go all the way out today." What the ?? But the thought of a bed and a Sunday to recover before going back to work on Monday sounded good to me. But could we do it? I knew we'd have to get back to the road before dark, which didn't leave much room for error. So we soaked in the last of the views and took off. Ryan didn't want to descend the same way we went up, so we went a worse way down. Sketchy stuff. I don't know how those berry bushes have such strong roots, but I'm thankful for that. We packed up camp and started crashing down, avoiding the "nasty gulch" this time.
| | | | | | Back at the creek, our route seemed worse than before. A windstorm or some other disturbance had knocked down about 50 trees in a quarter mile. We crawled over and under, jumped across some. Ten minutes later, I look down, and the GPS I'd clipped to my camera bag was gone. Oh great! Not that I needed it for navigation, but it was four hundred bucks! GREAT! We backtracked, not even sure if we were going back through the maze the exact same way. Oxalis and ferns covered the ground. After twenty minutes, we were standing there looking around hopelessly. Finally I said, "Screw it, let's go" -- I turned around, and there it was, five feet from me. I was speechless, but that renewed my energy. At 6:30 p.m., we left the creek and headed straight up. We had a couple hours to take our whooped bodies 1800 feet up to the top of the ridge before we even got to the road. Somehow we did it. We crawled the last little bit and collapsed when we got to the road at 10:00 p.m. with the sunset fading fast.
| | | | | | At that point, we both wanted to pass out, but the truck was only seven miles down the road. Walking down the road with our headlights to guide us, Ryan says "Don't plan another trip like this for at least two years" We got back to the bikes and spent a good twenty minutes banging away on mine, so that it could coast. Had to duct tape the chain to the frame. The last half mile, cruising downhill into the darkness was such a good feeling. We got back to the truck at 1:30 a.m. and back at the cabin on the Hoh at 2:30 a.m., with a nice hot shower to sting all the cuts, scrapes and bruises, and a cold mountain dew.
Roundtrip was somewhere around 25 miles and close to 6,000 vertical feet, including the road.
| | |
|
