Queets Basin is a rough mountain valley, covered for the most part only with berry bushes, and with rocky gorges cutting its surface where the river's several branches had worn away deep courses. Overshadowing the basin were the outposts of Olympus itself, with the snout of Humes's glacier thrusting its icy seracs almost into the berry land, and the pinnacled peaks behind rising majestically against the northern skyline. Westward, the roaring Queets vanished down a canyon, through a country of the roughest kind, and, we were told, one hitherto unexplored. A journey to the sea following the white-watered Queets would be a worth-while experience, we thought, seeing the first mile of it; but like many another, the Mountain Climber and I, unless we live to the age of Methuselah and devote all our years to outings, will never be able to take one half the trips we have planned and secretly long for; exclusive of our cherished ramble down the Queets! The packs slipped from our backs at the base of a giant fir, and we called it camp. Next to the bear who almost thrust his nose into my bed next morning, my most vivid recollection of that camp was the blueberry bread we concocted in the frying-pan, which was fit for the very gods of old Olympus. Then we climbed Olympus. Coming on the heels of Mt. McKinley, it was no great feat of mountaineering for the Mountain Climber, but nevertheless it combined happily all the varied attractions of climbing. The ascent of Olympus does, indeed, entail almost every sort of mountaineering, and some of it reasonably difficult and dangerous. In the first place, the approach to the mountain is perhaps its crowning feature; it is a man's sized trip to get within striking distance, and to its inaccessibility is due the fact that up to 1907 it was unscaled. When once reached, there are goodly glaciers to be conquered, vast snow fields to be negotiated, some hard ice work, and a lot of stiff climbing, all at long range from the nearest practical base camp. By daybreak we were under way. Through bushes, across a ravine, up a narrow tongue of snow in a "chimney," and then over a shoulder of rock débris, an outshoot of the lower lateral moraine of the Humes's glacier, and we found ourselves on the seracs of the glacier's snout, with no choice but to take to them. By the time we had found a way over the broken green ice, with its sudden chasms, the sun was warm at our backs and the chill of the dawn was forgotten. Then we emerged from the ice hummocks which mightily resembled a storm-tossed sea suddenly petrified, and commenced the leg-wearying ascent of the long snow field above, which clothed the glacier and stretched toward a rim of dark cliffs, the summit of the divide between us and Olympus proper. Toward the lowest saddle in this rocky wall we set our course.