Lower Lena Lake is just the gateway. Past the lake, the trail drops into a stretch named the Valley of the Silent Men, and it earns it: moss over everything, a creek running through the middle, and a waterfall tucked back into a mossy grotto. At one point we shared the trail with a small band of mountain goats who didn't seem inclined to move. I picked wild blueberries off the bushes along the way, which might be the best trail snack there is. Keep going past all of that, and the trail stops being a trail — you've crossed into the Brothers Wilderness, and from here it's a climb.

The Brothers themselves were named back in 1856 by a surveyor for his fiancée's two brothers, Arthur and Edward — a better story than most mountains get, and better than the 1968 proposal to rename them "The Brothers Kennedy," which never went anywhere. They're the tallest peaks in the wilderness that carries their name, and above climber's camp the trail turns into loose scree and a narrow, exposed scramble through a section called the Hourglass — 3rd and 4th class moves, helmet on, no room for a wrong turn. I eyed a false summit short of the real one before the cairns set me straight. The top is the payoff for all of it: The Brothers is one of the only Olympic peaks visible from Seattle, and standing on the summit block you can see exactly why, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound spread out past the ridgeline below.