Sequim Balloon Festival

We all make them...

Post #11 - A big mistake

By the time of the 1889/90 Press Expedition, there were hundreds of trails used by the Native Nations of the Olympic Peninsula. Harry Hobucket, Quileute Tribe, wrote about a trail from Port Angeles up through the Olympic mountains, along the ridge by the Sol Duc River and down to Lake Quinault, Trisha and my final destination.

While the tribes' single-file trails simply wound around trees and obstacles, the Press Expedition had been slowly cutting a wide swath of forest so that the interior of the Olympics might be open to settlers. Captain Barnes said, "So thoroughly had we done it that a party leaving Port Angeles could lope after us on horseback, and easily travel in a few days over a road it had taken us months to come."

By the time the Press Expedition had reached the confluence of the Goldie River in April of 1889, gone was any attempt at road building. The men needed to find the headwaters of the Quinault and quickly. Their supplies were almost gone, and wild-game proved elusive. It was then that Christie took a gamble, deciding that the Goldie River would be a shortcut to the Quinault River.

It was a mistake that would make my earlier six-mile navigation error seem microscopic.

The Press Expedition left the Elwha behind and slogged their way up the Goldie River, climbing a valley so steep that there is still no trail through it today. When their last mule refused to go on, they left her behind to starve. They cached more of their precious supplies to lighten their load and carried what little they had left on their backs. When nobody was looking, their own hungry dogs wolfed down the last of the supply of bacon. Of the ragged-looking men, Barns said. "Tougher looking tramps never bummed the roadside."

The Press Expedition wasn't lost, yet the men didn't understand what was in front of them. Day after day, they continued to climb through the snow, determined to reach the ridge above the Goldie to where they could look down and reckon their actual location.

Finally, when the men of the Press Expedition stood on the final crest of snow and ice, they realized their mistake. Below them was not the Quinault, but the same Elwha River, which in the shape of a letter 'C' had almost circled them. Their struggle up the Goldie River valley, the most difficult twelve-days of their entire journey, could have been accomplished by a three-day easy snowshoe up the Elwha. But the men spent no time on self-recrimination. "Such is the fate of explorers," wrote Barnes jauntily, as the men quickly traversed down the other side of the ridge to join the Elwha in the vicinity of this log bridge at Chicago Camp.

Meanwhile, it was the end of the day, and Trisha and I still had three more steep miles left to climb to reach where we were supposed to camp for the night. Exhausted, we gave up, flopped down at Chicago Camp, and slept dreamlessly next to the Elwha River.

Tomorrow, both the Press Expedition and Trisha and I would leave our old friend, the Elwha River, which at this altitude was reduced to the size of a small stream. Covering the same ground—but separated by 130 years—all of us would make the final push to the pass at Low Divide and the headwaters of the Quinault River. This ground back in 1890 would be the last bit of terra incognita on the Olympic Peninsula—perhaps in the United States—not for the tribes, but for James Christie and the Press Expedition.

To be continued...