Category: Backpacking

Hiking In The Fog

Hiking in the Fog – 1

Going through my hiking photos from years past. I didn’t take nearly as many photos when it was foggy or misty or raining. Since I primarily hiked in the Olympic National Park, that meant that I had my camera in the pack a lot of days. After a while I got a couple of different waterproof (or resistant) cameras … first a Minolta and then a Nikonos. But the Minolta didn’t have a real good lens on it and the Nikonos was a brick. Like real heavy. I was delighted when I found the digital cameras became available in a waterproof, rugged vesion (my favorite was the Nikon AW series). These were all taken the same day, but I’m not sure what camera. It was film, though.

Hiking in the Fog – 2
Hiking in the Fog – 3
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Favorite Campsite

Favorite Campsite: Camp Pleasant

I have been writing up my hiking memiors. Hours and hours and hours of working at the computer. Haven’t had much time for working on (new) photography or blogging. Lots of going through old photos that I took while out hiking.

This was one of my favorite destinations for a backpack (or just a dayhike, back when I could do a long hike in a day). Camp Pleasant probably burnt up in the North Fork Skokomish fire (AKA Bear Gulch). I will be interested to see, when they finally let folks into the area (probably a year or two). This is in the southeast corner of the Olympic National Park. Just over 6 miles in from the trailhead at Staircase Ranger Station.

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The Dosewallips

The Dosewallips River

The Dosewallips River is one of the major rivers draining the east side of the Olympic Peninsula. The photo above was taken from the old car campground that is now backpack in only, since the road washed out over 20 years ago. (it’s about 6.5 miles – about 10.5 km) It is in the Olympic National Park, but the access road is in the Olympic National Forest. So, who’s responsible for fixing the road? Let’s argue about it for another decade or so…

Below shows the trail not far outside of the campground. It’s beautiful country and it’s too bad that it is so much harder for seniors to access these days.

Dosewallips Trail
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Water Quality in the High Country

Filtering Water from Heart Lake

Back when I was hiking in the ’60’s and ’70’s, we just drank water out of streams and lakes if they seemed like they were ‘safe’. We looked for running water, especially if it had enough of a drop to it to get aerated. We figured the oxygen cleaned it up. I had friends that kept that philosophy up through the ’90’s. I started filtering water much earlier than that … about the first that backpacking filters became available. These photos are both taken at Heart Lake in the upper Sol Duc valley in the Olympic National Park. The photo below shows how the lake got its name.

The Heart Shape of Heart Lake
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