Trip Report
Mt. Olympus is the traditional home of the gods in Greek Mythology. It is just over 9000 feet high in Greece. Utah and Washington also claim a Mt. Olympus. The Mt. Olympus in Utah is also just over 9,000 feet high and not typically a very challenging peak, but that can change in the winter, during a snowstorm and after getting 2 feet of fresh powder! This climb is 3.5 miles to the summit, but gains over 4,000 feet in those 3.5 miles, so it is quite steep.
We started around 4 am, because we wanted it to be cold and a lower risk of an avalanche. We didn’t anticipate much avalanche terrain on this mountain, but the whole Wasatch backcountry had either a severe or considerable avalanche risk the day of our attempt, given the recent large snowfall. We wanted to be coming down before any warm afternoon sun. Turned out that wasn’t going to be a problem.
We made pretty good time initially because first couple miles of the trail were packed down from previous hikers. But as the trail gained in elevation, we saw fewer signs of recent trail usage and it started to snow. The last approximately 3/4ths of a mile we had to break new trail and the going got extremely tough. We were swimming through snow waist or even sometimes chest deep.
Brig and I were going on about 3 hours of sleep, the snow was deep and this was my first time at nearly 9000 feet in more than a year so our progress was somewhat slow. In fact our last 3/4ths of a mile took us just as long as the initial almost 3 miles. It also got quite cold with snow coming down thickly, wind blowing, the sun was blocked out by clouds and we couldn’t stop more than a minute before we were chilled to the bone. We estimated the wind chill to be close to 0 F (-17 C). I remember thinking if one of us fell and broke a bone, or twisted an ankle etc, we would be in trouble. A helicopter couldn’t make it into that terrain with an ongoing storm, and not moving for very long would result in frostbite. These conditions were not compatible with life for very long. However, with the exertion of moving up the mountain in all this fresh snow, we stayed warm enough.
At last we reached the summit. We knew we were at the summit not because we had a spectacular vista and could see all the way back to the valley, but we knew we were at the summit because there wasn’t anything higher we could go up. We stopped and snapped a few photos of us with Laura, along with 6 Climb 4 Kidney Cancer Medals that we carried to the top.
