THE NEXT MORNING, we awake refreshed beside the Elwha River and knock off ten miles before lunch. Judging from the way the map's contour lines accordion together, we know we can't maintain this pace for long. Roo begins naming the segments of our trip, starting with the Vale of Growing Unease.

Turning off-trail up the Elwha Basin, we find our progress immediately retarded by downed firs and hemlocks. The lattice of timber, some 15 feet high in places, forces us to slither on our bellies or clamber over the logs, legs kicking helplessly in the air. The concertina wire of thorny vines bloodies our legs. Our torsos and arms grow sticky-dirty with sap. Stinging nettles cover every bit of exposed flesh with tiny welts. Once in a while we can leap from boulder to boulder in the frothy river. But soon enough we are back fighting brambles, smelling like sweet pine and feeling that, despite our best efforts, we are choosing the worst possible route.

Then the briar patch tilts. We have no choice but to bushwhack along an avalanche-blasted sidehill, the Subvertical Carnage, thus combining general misery with the acute possibility of a thumping fall. Good thing we brought the safety pin and wipes. We balance-beam over airy precipices and cling to dangling roots as if aid-climbing. I'm about to snap the blades off my collapsible paddle if they catch on another branch. It takes us almost six hours to cover three miles, which breaks down to an average speed of Goddamn Slow.

At dusk, we follow a finger of snow—Slog-asaurus Rex—to higher ground and sleep five hours on a rock island in the middle of a snowfield. Finally, at 9 A.M. the next day, after several more hours of early-morning bushwhacking, we reach the smooth tongue of our first glacier. Penguins couldn't be happier.

Here, the Humes Glacier is almost flat, with few visible crevasses, and we trudge forward as the clouds break apart and the temperature soars. Because we're almost out of sunscreen, I wear full storm gear and Roo wears his equivalent, a billowy drysuit. At the rock fin dividing the Humes Glacier from our next obstacle, the Hoh Glacier, we break for elevensies, the meal after brunch and before lunch, and inspect the Hoh.

Six hundred feet below, the terrain is sliced up like a rocker T-shirt from the eighties. Popsicle-blue crevasses of unknown depth stretch from one rock wall to the next. Our spirits sink.