Traversing Gray Wolf Ridge, a WA County High Point

When is a ridge not a ridge? When is Gray Wolf Ridge high point of Clelland County in the Olympics? Come watch us battle high winds, steep snow, and near disaster as we descend thousands of feet to get to our campsite as the sun goes down. We'll start off on Tyler Peak with great views of Puget Sound, then we'll traverse over to Baldy Mountain and then Gray Wolf with awesome views into the Olympic interior from Olympus to Mystery Deception Group to Constance Buckhorn. Classic early spring Olympics covered in snow. This a boulder problem or what? Wow. Katie and I are here at the Tyler Peak trailhead in the Olympics with a plan to climb Tyler Peak, traverse over to Baldy, to Gray Wolf, traverse down onto the Royal Creek Trail, camp at Royal Creek tonight. Hello! Excited to be out here climbing. Weather looks great. Should be a good weekend. Look at this cute little guy. He's feeling a little angsty about what's about to happen. That's part of the hike is just steep switchbacks. Next up, Tyler Peak. We're in the center of Tyler Peak kicking off the ridge walk. That's Deception and the Mystery over there. And this is the Constance Buckhorn group. And this way we have Juan de Fuca, Mal Baker, and Canada over there. This puts us at the far end of our ridge traverse going from here to Baldy to Gray Wolf Ridge to South Gray Wolf Ridge. It's pretty far away from here and there's gonna be a lot of up and down but should have good views the whole time. Should be fun. Oh, I hit the first snow and it's pretty tricky. I randomly punched through with a knee or even waist deep. This part is pretty steep. We're in the summit of Gray Wolf Ridge in the Olympics. Great views. How was it, Katie? It was good. I'm glad that we hopefully don't have to go back up the way that we came down Baldy because it was very loose free. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's 5 p.m and we're doing more camping yet. I mean we know it's a ways away. So gotta keep moving. That's the county high point. And my goodness, Mount Olympus. See you on the other side. We have made a judgment call that we're gonna basically cut down to the trail from here. Down shitty terrain for several thousand feet. Should only be bad for the first little bit. Once we're in the tree line, we'll have different problems. But it won't be about like the steep challenge side of it. So hopefully this decision doesn't bite us in the ass. Here goes nothing. Well, we made the descent successfully. In places it was a little schwacky. A whole lot of steep terrain with dirt, rocks, and at some point towards the bottom pine cones and sticks. Managed to avoid getting funneled into a ravine full of slide alder by escaping off the side at the very last possible moment maybe. And it all worked out. They dropped us off at the trail right near the Royal Creek Camp. A named campsite maintained by the NPS. We couldn't find it. We found a nice little patch of ground that hard to believe that anybody ever camped here. What's up, deer? The traverse of Tyler Peak to Grey Wolf down to Royal Creek went well. And it was really beautiful with the clear views yesterday. Seeing all the volcanoes and then all the way into the Olympics. Definitely want to climb Mount Mystery someday. I've already climbed a lot of the other ones. Coffee! Coffee! This looks more like a campsite.