EDITOR”S NOTE: This is the fourth dispatch from Roger Harnack, Peninsula Daily News’ local news editor.
Packing a laptop computer and satellite telephone, he has been sending back daily reports from the 12-person, five-day, 46-mile “Press Expedition — Across the Olympic Mountains 2001” expedition from the Elwha Valley to Lake Quinault this week.
This group of journalists, recreating the famous Press Expedition of 1889-90, the first party to explore the inner reaches of the Olympics, is expected to be out of the mountains by this afternoon.
Look for Harnack’s wind-up report in Sunday’s PDN.
LOW DIVIDE, Olympic National Park — Day 4 — We’re still here.
Less two members of our party.
Tired of the wet and cold, Amy McConnell, a senior editor of Sunset magazine and Megan McMorris of Fitness magazine left camp Thursday morning with three mountain climbers.
They hiked four miles down to 12 Mile Camp, successfully waded the rain-swollen North Fork Quinault River and then worked their way to the North Fork trailhead, where they got a ride with the climbers to Lake Quinault Lodge.
They checked into the lodge about 9 p.m., utterly bushed, according to the news desk at the Peninsula Daily News.
Great news! We were all worried about them.
The rest of us rested all day Thursday near the tiny Low Divide ranger’s station.
The full dispatch appears in the Friday/Saturday edition of the Peninsula Daily News, on sale throughout Clallam and Jefferson counties. Click onto “Subscribe” to order your PDN delivered to your home or office.