Christmas on Mount Olympus

To start wrapping up the year, we decided to take on Olympus again.  We've each done it solo a couple times this year, but this was the 5th time this year for each of us.  Maybe I'll go run up it once more without him just to stay ahead.  We actually weren't expecting to have a fast time due to the snow, but we started out at a pretty good pace, and kept it up for quite a while.

We run it with an app called Endomondo, which I have set up to chirp out alarms based on various points of my PR for the mountain.  The first chirp went off 30 seconds before we reached the first stream bed, meaning we were very close to my best time.

The second chirp went off about a minute before the second stream bed, which meant that if we could hustle up the endless staircase, we could potentially set a new PR.  However, it wasn't meant to be.  The staircase was covered with very icy snow, and moving as fast as we had hoped became unrealistic.  Going down that same area proved very painful to my backside.

We reached the saddle and came across a winter camper sitting by his fire.  We've never seen someone camped up there, but if I were to do it, I'd pick winter as well.

Summit Photo

Thumbs up by the mailbox



Time to First Stream Bed:  0:34:09
Time to Second Stream Bed:  0:52:08
Time to Saddle:  1:27:56
Time to Summit:  1:43:39

Orange Trail Monkeys were here.

 The final scramble wasn't covered in very much snow since it faces south without much tree cover.  The summit was beautiful as the snow started to fall.  As usual, we stayed only about 5 minutes, but this time it was probably more of necessity.  The temperature was starting to drop as the storm moved in, and I was wearing only shorts.

Steve Running down the trail.