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RumiDude
Marmota olympus



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RumiDude
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PostWed Jun 05, 2013 5:19 pm 
I was told there was once a trail from Pyrites Creek on the West Fork Quinault River to the Low Divide. I am wondering if any others know of this and have any info. Rumi

"This is my Indian summer ... I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all."
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Ancient Ambler
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PostWed Jun 05, 2013 9:18 pm 
RumiDude wrote:
I was told there was once a trail from Pyrites Creek on the West Fork Quinault River to the Low Divide. I am wondering if any others know of this and have any info. Rumi
There was a trail that went from the Quinault River trail up the Pyrites Creek drainage and dead-ended about two-thirds of the way up in Pyrites Basin. I believe that the last USGS map it showed up on was the 1947 USGS Mount Steel 1:62.5k topo. You can download a pdf copy of that map here. Here's a jpg of the relevant portion of the 1947 USGS topo:
Pyrites Creek trail 1947 USGS Mt Steel
Pyrites Creek trail 1947 USGS Mt Steel
There is a later relief map that shows the Pyrites trail, Richard Pargeter's 1956 "Olympics in Relief", discussed and available here. I doubt that there was ever any built trail from Pyrites Basin over to Martins Park, the nearest trail leading to Low Divide. [edit]: The person who told you there was a trail from Pyrites over to Low Divide may have been thinking about the route that some members of the O'Neil Party followed from O'Neil Pass to the vicinity of Mount Olympus in mid-September 1890. According to Robert Wood, they ascended Pyrites Creek, made a camp in the Pyrites Basin. Their multi-day route from there went over the top ridge of Pyrites Basin to what they named Bretherton Pass (the pass between Rustler Creek and Godkin Creek), then ascended from Bretherton Pass in a northerly direction, probably in the vicinity of peak 5469 to the east of Mount Delabarre (aka Mount Taylor, aka Peak 6024), eventually following the ridge between Buckinghorse Creek and Delabarre Creek until they reached the Elwha River near what is now Chicago Camp. From there they went up the Elwha headwaters and over what is now Dodwell Rixon Pass toward Olympus, which is another story. But their route did not go between Pyrites and Low Divide. This is covered in Chapter 31 of Wood's book, Men, Mules and Mountains and the route is sketched out on Map #17 in the book's appendix. The description of the difficult travel and weather they encountered in this area makes for interesting reading.

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RodF
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PostThu Jun 06, 2013 8:59 pm 
The most optimistic map of this proposed trail is Jim Taplin's 1932 "Olympic Trail Guide"...
Pyrites Creek - Martins Park route
Pyrites Creek - Martins Park route
Elvin and Herbert Olson had scouted this proposed trail route sometime in the 1920s. Elvin Olson described this in a 1975 interview with Mike Doherty (then NPS trail worker, now Clallam County Commissioner). Source: Olympic NP oral history archives. "Mike Doherty: Did you plan to have the trail, which was later started, up the Rustler and then down the Pyrites connected for a loop trip up there? Elvin Olson: Yeah after we got up there we started this trail up Pyrites Creek and figured on crossing over on the Rustler and on into the Low Divide. Join the two places together. MD: Did the Olson brothers start the Pyrites trail? EO: We didn’t start it but I mean we… MD: Urged the Forest Service? EO: We urged the Forest Service. The Forest Service is the one that built it." ... "MD: Were you involved in locating or working on the Pyrites? That short trail? EO: No and I don’t remember even who built that trail. I believe that it was John Bunch, I think, who built that trail. MD: For the Forest Service? EO: For the Forest Service, yeah. ... "MD: Did you ever have a plan to go out on the Godkin so that you would hook Low Divide together closer to the Pyrites trail? Was that ever planned? Elvin Olson: Yeah but that’s a rough country. But Herbert and I spent quite a little time by going up Pyrites Creek, to the end of it and then what we wanted to do was to get around to the Low Divide without having to drop down into the… MD: Godkin? EO: No without dropping down into… Well either the Godkin or into the Rustler, either one. MD: You were going to stay high? EO: We wanted to stay high around. Which we could have done in this day and age the way they build trails in forest country. But at that time you know the Forest Service was pretty tight on powder work and things like that you know. And we did get one location, which was only about… It would have taken about two hundred feet probably on the open face of a rock through. Which our idea was at the time to drill that rock and put in a hanging trail on the cliff, which now days there would be nothing to it. In fact Yellowstone Park, they’ve got a whole road that’s hanging on the same kind of a deal. MD: And you guys were thinking about that? EO: We were thinking about that but in the future some time. But we knew that the Forest Service wouldn’t do it at that time so we gave that one up. But as I say we spent a lot of time on the Godkin side and all. And we would think that everything was going fine and pretty soon we would run into quite a mess of thick stuff you know and we would crawl on through it and finally look down and there was maybe a thousand feet below us. So you would have to back up and go somewhere else. MD: Look again. On the one that you found that you thought about the hanging bridge, was that like over toward Christie or was that on the Chimney Peak side of the Godkin? Which side of the Godkin do you think that you would go down? EO: It wouldn’t have been on the Godkin at all; it would have been on the Rustler side. MD: Oh, oh. EO: It would have been coming right into the… Oh what’s that? MD: Elk Park? EO: Well Elk Park and the other one. Martin’s Park. It would have come right around into Martin’s Park and into the Low Divide. MD: Oh yeah. EO: And finally the trail that we decided on afterward, but not with any real location, but we went through and knew that it would be an easy route to build. We had to drop down about a thousand-foot elevation into the Rustler, into the upper part of the Rustler. And then back up. It would have been an easy grade. And easy grade was okay to do. MD: And you would continue around near Christie, Mt. Christie. EO: Yeah and Mt. Angeles [?]. And that would have come into the… The way that we went we would have come into Martin’s Park too. But we also thought that it could have probably been from around a little further toward the North Fork. MD: And through Elk Park then? EO: Through Elk Park. [Elk Park - see map above or the 1918 Olympic NF map - is on western slope of Mt. Christie, high above Sixteenmile Shelter/camp site on N Fk Quinault. I see no easy traverse to it, and wonder if he meant Geoduck basin? RodF] MD: Oh yeah. So one way you would have gone through kind of that gap. EO: Yeah. MD: And through Martin’s Park. EO: Yeah. MD: And the other way would go through Elk Park? EO: Yeah. But that trail of course, like I say it was never… The trail… Well in fact it went into the Park [Mount Olympus National Monument, designated in 1909 and administered by USFS until 1933, see boundary line just above Pyrites on map above - RodF]. I guess about that same time that the Park area was extended down that far. You see the Park area was extended down to the eighteen mile, which was at Pyrites Creek. And then they extended it again and it took in as far as this side of the Graves Creek. [1938] And then of course the last extension was clear on down that side. [1940]"

"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir "the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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Ancient Ambler
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PostFri Jun 07, 2013 6:28 am 
RodF wrote:
The most optimistic map of this proposed trail is Jim Taplin's 1932 "Olympic Trail Guide"...
Pyrites Creek - Martins Park routeElvin and Herbert Olson had scouted this proposed trail route sometime in the 1920s.  Elvin Olson described this in a 1975 interview with Mike Doherty (then NPS trail worker, now Clallam County Commissioner).
Pyrites Creek - Martins Park routeElvin and Herbert Olson had scouted this proposed trail route sometime in the 1920s. Elvin Olson described this in a 1975 interview with Mike Doherty (then NPS trail worker, now Clallam County Commissioner).
Fascinating find, RodF. The depth and breadth of your ONP historical knowledge and resources never cease to amaze. Where did you find the interview transcript? Sounds like their original plan was to stay high on the south side of Delabarre (aka Taylor, aka Peak 6024) going from Bretherton Pass and staying high above the north fork of Rustler Creek heading to Martins Park. Having looked down at the south face of Delabarre from its summit, I can understand why they gave up the idea of building a high trail through there. The following aerial photo and map show the kind of terrain they were dealing with.
Delabarre from SW
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Delabarre from SW
Map Bretherton to Martins Park
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Map Bretherton to Martins Park
Sounds like they eventually settled on a route that dropped lower from Bretherton Pass to Rustler Creek, followed Rustler Creek for a way heading west and, before reaching the north fork of Rustler, headed up a steep but not too cliffy rounded ridge to more manageable terrain on the east slopes of the north fork of Rustler Creek, traversing up to the col that leads down to Martins Park. This is pretty much the route that Gary-n-Jan took in the opposite direction, from Martins Park to Rustler Creek, in their excellent September 2011 trip to Muncaster Basin described here. In a way, it's too bad that trail didn't get built from Pyrites to Martins Park. On the other hand, the absence of a trail leaves this rough country seldom visited and ripe for exploration.

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RumiDude
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PostFri Jun 07, 2013 7:38 am 
Ancient Ambler wrote:
Fascinating find, RodF. The depth and breadth of your ONP historical knowledge and resources never cease to amaze. Where did you find the interview transcript?
Yes, fascinating ... and you, AA, ain't too shabby an historian as well. I enjoy alll the information. I only wish we could archive all this information in a logical way so it would be more readily available. Unfortunately that is beyond my abilities. Unless and untill that happenes, I will try to figure out the search function here and ask questions. RodF, again I thank you so much for taking the time to share with us all. And thank you AA (and all the rest of the contributors to historical data) for sharing your knowledge as well. Rumi

"This is my Indian summer ... I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all."
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RodF
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PostSun Mar 23, 2014 3:33 pm 
Carl Pangratz, retired Olympic NP ranger, many years ago located John Bunch's cache of trail tools in Pyrites Basin. He also located Grant and Will Hume's cache of tools, cooking utensils and bamboo fly rod in the Godkin, directly across from Crystal Creek. The Humes were constructing this trail under USFS contract, and continued to use it to lead fishing parties up the Godkin (which, like the Goldie, was and is famous for its huge trout). Carl says he found fragments of the trail by searching for stumps, then following the tread as it traverses the slopes above the west bank of the Godkin. These two trails would have joined at Bretherton Pass. Trail construction was abandoned when Mount Olympus National Monument was transferred from USFS to NPS in 1933.

"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir "the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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