47°50′N 123°50′W / 47.83°N 123.83°W Template:Geobox
The Olympic Mountains are a mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula of western Washington in the United States. The mountains are not especially high - Mount Olympus is the highest at 7,962 ft (2,427 m) - but the western slopes of the Olympics rise directly out of the Pacific Ocean and are the wettest place in the 48 contiguous states; the Hoh Ranger Station in the Hoh Rain Forest records an average of 360 cm (142 in) of rainfall each year. Areas to the east of the mountains, however, are located in a rainshadow and are much drier relative to other places in coastal Washington. Most of the mountains are protected within the bounds of the Olympic National Park. Physiographically, they are a section of the larger Pacific Border province, which in turn are part of the larger Pacific Mountain System physiographic division.
History
The mountains were originally called "Sun-a-do" by the Duwamish Indians, while the first European to see them, the Spanish navigator Juan Perez, named them "Sierra Nevada de Santa Rosalia", in 1774. But the English captain John Meares, seeing them in 1788, thought them beautiful enough for the gods to dwell there, and named them "Mount Olympus" after the one in Greece. Alternate proposals never caught on, and in 1864 the Seattle Weekly Gazette persuaded the government to make the present-day name official. Though readily visible from most parts of western Washington, the interior was almost entirely unexplored until the 1890s. Mount Olympus itself was not officially ascended until 1907, one of the first successes of The Mountaineers, which had been organized in Seattle just a few years earlier.
Pioneering settlers came to the north Olympic Peninsula as early as the mid-1800's -- but the rugged mountainous interior remained unexplored. Local Native American tribal factions felt that was where only spirits dwelled. The earliest unconfirmed accounts of an ascent of Mount Olympus are by two white men and two Native Americans from Cape Flattery in 1854. There was a subsequent expedition led by Melbourne Watkinson in 1878. But the first well documented exploration of the Olympic Mountains occurred in the summer of 1885.
Army Lieutenant Joseph P. O'Neil led a small party of enlisted men from Vancouver Barracks and civilian engineers on a reconnaissance of the Olympic Mountains. O'Neil chose the tiny waterfront community of Port Angeles (forty inhabitants, one hotel, one sawmill, and two general stores) as his starting point because of its proximity to the mountains. On July 17, the party headed south into the foothills following a route similar to the present-day Hurricane Ridge Road, making slow progress cutting a trail through dense forest and windfalls. It took them about a month to access Hurricane Ridge on foot. From there part of the group began to explore the Elwha River valley while O'Neil and the others headed southeast. O'Neil explored almost as far south as Mount Anderson before a messenger reached him with orders to report to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the expedition was cut short.
A second assault legendary on the deep Olympic interior was made in the winter of 1889-1890. During the fall of 1889 (the same year that Washington became a state) the Seattle Press newspaper called for "hardy citizens . . . to acquire fame by unveiling the mystery which wraps the land encircled by the snow capped Olympic range." The Press Party consisted of six men whom the Press described as having "an abundance of grit and manly vim". The group included four dogs, two mules, and 1500 pounds of supplies. This group entered the Olympic Mountains in December 1889, in the midst of one of the harshest and snowiest winters in the history of the Olympic Peninsula.
The team was assembled by a foolhardy Scottish explorer named James Helbold Christie. Christie wanted to make a name for himself, and he knew if he waited to make the crossing until spring that he would be competing against a bevy of similar teams. The first two mistakes came in quick succession. The team rented a wagon to carry lumber to the Elwha River. The wagon couldn't make it through the think undergrowth to the river, and so the men bought two mules named Dolly and Jenny and cut a trail to the river. Cutting the trail took two weeks. Once there, they set about building a boat, which turned out to be total disaster. Once the boat was built and launched, it immediately sank. The men dredged it out, dried it out, and spent two more weeks rebuilding it. When they launched it for the second time, it wouldn't go. Or rather, the only way they could get it to go was to pull it by man or mule power. By January 24, more than a month into the trip, they were only five miles up the river. The boat was abandoned.
The party spent the first three months of 1890 exploring the Elwha River Valley. In mid-March the explorers discovered and named Geyser Valley, where they heard sounds they thought were bubbling geysers (although there are none in the valley). James Christie predicted Geyser Valley would make "a young paradise for some venturesome squatter". Indeed, and ten years later Will and Grant Humes homesteaded in the valley. The Humes Ranch cabin can still be visited today, about 2.5 miles from the Whiskey Bend trailhead.
The rest of the trip was plagued by even more problems, including a blizzard that hit just after they abandoned the boat. They hauled heavy packs through thick snow -- and their poor mules, which were ill equipped for walking through snow, were cut and scraped by the sharp crust of ice. By early March, they were not even out of the Elwha watershed when Jenny the mule fell over a 400-foot ledge and had to be shot. They reapportioned her pack and set off again. A month and a half later, an injured Dolly laid down and would not get up. Christie unburdened her and set the starving mule free never to be seen again.
They forged onward, only to encounter more problems when, a week later, the dogs ate the last of their meat. As legend has it, their key to deep winter survival came by killing and eating a full grown black bear. Luckily for the men, their dogs turned out to be good at harassing bears. After they shot their first bear, the men were so hungry that they melted and drank its fat.
In early May, the Press Party, their clothes in tatters and running dangerously low on supplies, crossed Low Divide and headed down the Quinault Valley, reaching the coast on May 20, 1890 after nearly six months in the mountains.They caught a boat from the Quinault Indian Reservation to Grays Harbor where they wired the Press to let them know they'd made it and to ask for money for haircuts and warm meals.
As a result of the Press Expedition, many peaks bear the names of prominent newspaper publishers and editors of the late 19th century, including Mt. Meany (named after Edmond Meany, an editor of the Seattle Press), Mt. Dana, Mt. Lawson, Mt. Noyes, Mt. Scott, and the much-ballyhooed Bailey Range high alpine traverse. Press Party blazes can still be found along the Elwha River trail in the park. Also during the fall and winter of 1889, Charles Gilman and his son Samuel explored the Quinault River valley and the western slopes of the Olympic Peninsula facing the Pacific Ocean. In the summer of 1890 Lieutenant Joseph O'Neil, accompanied by a group of scientists from the Oregon Alpine Club, led a second Army expedition across the Olympic Peninsula from Hood Canal to the Pacific coast. They cut a serviceable mule trail as they proceeded and several smaller parties were sent out to explore various areas of Olympic Range. One of these parties ascended Mount Olympus in September 1890.
It was during that summer that O'Neil met a small hiking party led by Judge James Wickersham. As a result of their adventures, both Wickersham and O'Neil advocated the establishment of a national park in the Olympics. O'Neil wrote in his 1890 report: "In closing I would state that while the country on the outer slope of these mountains is valuable, the interior is useless for all practicable purposes. It would, however, serve admirably for a national park. There are numerous elk -- that noble animal so fast disappearing from this country -- that should be protected."
In 1897 most of the forested land of the peninsula was included in the Olympic Forest Reserve (later Olympic National Forest). Following O'Neil's recommendation, Washington state Congressmen introduced unsuccessful bills in the early 1900's to establish a national park or an elk reserve. In 1909, just before leaving office, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation creating Mount Olympus National Monument within the national forest to protect the summer range and breeding grounds of the Olympic Elk. Mount Olympus, along with all other national monuments was transferred to National Park Service administration as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's governmental reorganization in 1933. And with the support of national conservation organizations, Washington Congressman Monrad C. Wallgren in 1935 sponsored a bill for the establishment of a national park.
After a visit to the Olympic Peninsula in the fall of 1937, President Roosevelt added his enthusiastic support to the movement for a national park, and the act establishing Olympic National Park was signed on June 29, 1938. The coastal strip was added to the park in 1953. In 1976, Olympic National Park became a Man and the Biosphere Reserve, and in 1981 it was designated a World Heritage Park.
Note: The history of the Olympic Peninsula is closely tied to the land and the sea, and begins long before the white explorers arrived and written word was used here. To know that history we rely upon the oral traditions of the Native American tribes and upon the archeological artifacts found at different sites around the Peninsula. That history still impacts the region through the arts and cultural influences. To better understand the Peninsula, take time to learn about its history.
Geography
The Olympics have the form of a cluster of steep-sided peaks surrounded by heavily-forested foothills and incised by deep valleys.
The climax forests consist of Sitka spruce and western hemlock. Douglas fir occurs in groves. Other types of firs may be seen also. Clearings in the forest quickly become covered with vine maple, slide alder, and devil's club, making cross-country travel most challenging.
Another consequence of the high precipitation is the large number of snowfields and glaciers, reaching down to 1,500 m (5,000 ft) above sea level. There are about 266 glaciers crowning the Olympics peaks. The prominent glaciers are those on Mount Olympus covering approximately 10 square miles (26 km2). Beyond the Olympic complex are the glaciers of Mount Carrie, the Bailey Range, Mount Christie, and Mount Anderson.[1]
Geology
The Olympics are made up of an obducted clastic wedge material and oceanic crust. They are primarily Eocene sandstones, turbidites, and basaltic oceanic crust.[2]
Millions of years ago, vents and fissures opened under the Pacific ocean and lava flowed forth, creating huge underwater mountains and ranges called seamounts. The plates that formed the ocean floor inched toward North America about 35 million years ago and most of the sea floor went beneath the continental land mass. Some of the sea floor, however, was scraped off and jammed against the mainland, creating the dome that was the forerunner of today's Olympics. Powerful forces fractured, folded, and over-turned rock formations, which helps explain the jumbled appearance of the Olympics.[1]
In the Pleistocene, a vast continental ice sheet, descended from Alaska, south through British Columbia to the Olympics. The ice split into the Juan de Fuca and Puget ice lobes, as they encountered the resistant Olympic Mountains. A glacial outwash stream surged around the southern end of the peninsula to the Pacific Ocean. This isolated the Olympic Peninsula from the nearby Cascade Mountains and limited species from entering and exiting the peninsula. When the ice sheet reached the Peninsula, large areas of the continental shelf were also exposed by the lower sea levels since so much water was trapped as ice. This created a coastal refuge. The distance from Mount Olympus to the Pacific Ocean may have been double that of today.[1]
Ecology
The ecosystems of the Olympics vary depending on elevation: the lower elevations are quite different from the higher ones.
The low Olympics contains foothills and mountains and rises to an elevation of approximately 4,000 feet (1,200 m). Copious precipitation (up to 200 inches (5,000 mm) peryear) supports a lush, epiphyte-rich rainforest of Western Hemlock, Western Red Cedar, and Douglas-fir. Much of the region is in the third rotation of logging. However, a portion of the region lies within the Olympic National Park and contains ancient forests.[3]
The high Olympics contains steep, glaciated mountains that reach an elevation of almost 8,000 feet (2,400 m). It is characterized by rock outcrops, tarns, persistent snow pack, alpine glaciers, and high-gradient, glacial-fed streams. Its vegetation includes subalpine Mountain Hemlock and Pacific Silver Fir forests as well as alpine meadows. Subalpine fir occurs on the xeric soils of northeastern rainshadow areas.[3]
List of summits
Principal summits:
- Mount Olympus - highest point, eight glaciers
- Mount Constance - largest peak visible from Seattle
- Mount Anderson - West Peak of Mt Anderson is the hydrographic apex of the Olympic Mountains: From this peak, rivers flow outward to the Pacific Ocean, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Hood Canal.
- The Brothers - double peak visible from Seattle
- Mount Deception
- Mount Angeles
Other Summits
- Boulder Mountain - Peak located in the Lake Crescent and Elwha River area
- Mount Storm King - located just to the south of Lake Crescent
References
- ^ a b c "Olympic Mountains". USGS. Retrieved 2009-03-01.
- ^ Alt, D.D. (1984). Roadside Geology of Washington. pp. 249–259.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - ^ a b Pater, David; Bryce, S.A.; Kagan, Jimmy; et al., Ecoregions of Western Washington and Oregon (color poster with map, descriptive text, summary tables, and photographs) (PDF), Reston, Virginia: United States Geological Survey
{{citation}}: Explicit use of et al. in:|last4=(help) (and the Reverse side) Sentences in this article are copied verbatim from the source, which is in the public domain.
- Elliot, Daniel Giraud (1899). Catalogue of mammals from the Olympic Mountains, Washington. Field Columbian Museum.Available online through the Washington State Library's Classics in Washington History collection
- Olympic Mountain Rescue, Climber's Guide to the Olympic Mountains (Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1979)
Further reading
Wood, R.L., Across the Olympic Mountains: The Press Expedition, 1889-90 (Mountaineering Books, 1989)