The Brothers (Olympics)
With a beautiful forecast ahead of us, Liz and I decided to check out The Brothers in the Olympic Mountain Range. I’ve always wanted to visit the prominent peaks of the eastern olympics and this was a great starting point. The Brothers are a significant feature of the Seattle skyline and have a reputation in Washington as being arduous and technical, which we would have to respectfully disagree. While the route is long for most parties, however, we found with experience and reasonable speed, this was an incredibly pleasant day in the mountains. Using good route finding, the route does not exceed class 3 and is well marked.
Liz and I decided on a start time of 7AM, estimating it would take us between 8-10 hours round trip to complete our climb. The approach to Lena lake and through the forest was wonderful. Above Lena there are a few sections where the trail ‘disappears’ through deadfall and brush. Fortunately, someone has kindly marked the route with pink & orange flagging, making the route finding trivial. The south slopes of The Brothers burned in 1999 and 2006, but a defined climbers path still exists.
Through the burned forest.
Above the burn, we ascended scree to a snow finger and then to a moderately angled snow slope, which took us just below the summit. We used our trail runners for the entire approach and decided crampons were unnecessary due to the soft snow. We had followed the boot path of another party, who had camped at the base the night before. We ended up passing them from afar on the way down, and Liz commented that it looked like one of the party members was a child…. Turns out it was in fact a 10 year old boy! Kudos to them and it is really special when you see a family tackling an outing like this.
The snow finger.
Moderately steep snow slopes below the summit.
The summit block had several options to reach the summit. On our ascent, we chose a slightly more difficult 4th class variation to add a bit of excitement to a relatively straightforward ascent.
Ascending the summit block.
The summit views were spectacular, we could see the slopes of Mount Olympus, Seattle, Mount Baker, Rainier and even Mount St. Helens in the distance. We spent about 30 minutes on the summit, relaxing and soaking in the reward from a marvelous day.
Liz on the summit.
Summit selfie with my lovely wife :)
We put on our aluminum crampons to descend the snow slope and snow finger. This section is the only location with any hazard, so the added security felt appropriate. On our way out we decided to take a quick and refreshing dip in Lena Lake.
Frigid and refreshing… just how we like it :)
We reached our truck after 10 hours on the trail, with a bonus forage of some ripe salmonberries… It sure is great sharing this experience with someone you love. What a day!
