Olympic Mountains

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 2428 m (7965 ft) - but the western slopes of the Olympics face the Pacific Ocean and are thus the wettest place in the 48 coterminous states; the Hoh Ranger Station records an average of 360 cm (142 in) of rainfall each year. Most of the mountains are protected within the bounds of the Olympic National Park.

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 ascended until 1907, one of the first successes of The Mountaineers, which had been organized in Seattle just a few years earlier.

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.

The Mount Olympus National Monument was proclaimed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1909, and made into a park in 1938.

Principal summits:

• Mount Olympus - highest point, eight glaciers
• Mount Constance - largest peak visible from Seattle
• Mount Anderson
• The Brothers - double peak visible from Seattle

Reference

• Olympic Mountain Rescue, Climber's Guide to the Olympic Mountains (Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1979)