An Olympus Afternoon

Moonlight over Mt. Olympus

While Steve was resting up for his marathon on Saturday morning, Jake and Sam decided to climb Mt. Olympus as a duo.  Both Sam and Steve had done this climb many times, but for Jake it was a first.  Many of his hikes with the Trail Monkeys are firsts.  And again he had no idea what he was in for, particularly when it comes to vertical gain.

Sam mentioned the route would be something like this...

"First there's the beginning climb, then there's the switchbacks, then you get to the river, then you get to the caterpillar crawl, then you go up the Never-Ending-Staircase, and then you're on the saddle, and then there's an easy rock-scramble to the top."

Sounds easy right?  Monkeys can climb just about anything!  Or so I thought.  We started out by wondering if we should try to break the record, Steve's done it in some ridiculous time of 1:35, but we both quickly realized that this wasn't happening on this day.  Neither Sam nor I had been able to run much the last month, what with school starting and another kid on the way and football practice and basically life in general getting in the way of our free time.  So we decided we'd enjoy the climb rather than try to push ourselves too much.

Mt. Olympus in Greece

By way of information, The Mt. Olympus wilderness area and the Mt. Olympus peak in Salt Lake City it named after....Mt. Olympus in Greece!  SLC's Mt. Olympus is roughly the same height (9,026 feet) as Thessaloniki's Mt. Olympus, (9,570 feet), and the two mountains have very similar features and vertical gain.  Although The Greek version is a much more technical climb, with 5 different pitches that require rock climbing and rock climbing gear.  The SLC version only requires...calf muscles.

Nearly every trail report about Mt. Olympus talks about how the trail is "strenuous but rewarding", or "the hike is fairly steep", or "Difficulty:  Strenuous".  And so it goes.  I've never had cramps while hiking before but got some good ones while on the Never-Ending-Staircase.  Calf Cramps.  Still not a bad first climb for climbing the mountain named after the Home of the Greek Gods.  The fall leaves were beautiful, the scramble to the top was more fun that it was dangerous, and it didn't hurt so bad that I don't want to go back.  Maybe even to challenge Steve's time to the top....

Once we reached the top, Sam was in cell phone range and was able to check in with the wife, you know, to make sure she didn't go into labor or anything important like that while he was on top of the mountain.  Also, the mailbox has a summit registry in it.  Jack Frost has even been to the top of this mountain.

Monkeys break for bananas