Category: Backpacking

Yes, we were a little nervous…

Yes, we were a little nervous…

On a dayhike up to Martins Park above Low Divide (between the Elwha and North Fork Quinault river valleys in the Olympic National Park), we saw this black bear browsing the fresh greens. We were a little nervous … the above photo was taken with a normal lens … not a telephoto. But we had seen black bears a number of times before and hadn’t found them aggressive. Regardless, we didn’t stay around to do any bear watching. Our nervousness increased quite dramatically when the bear followed us for a mile or so down to near where our campsite was at Low Divide. We took special care to bear proof our food that night.

9

Happy Hollow

Happy Hollow Shelter

Happy Hollow Shelter is located 26.3 miles (42.3 km) from the Whiskey Bend trailhead of the Elwha River trail (it is the last shelter along the Elwha trail). You can see from the overgrown condition of the trail that this area of the Olympic National Park doesn’t get a lot of traffic. The shelters are provided for emergency use only … and one should expect to share any shelter in the Olympics with a large population of mice.

Below is the Happy Hollow outhouse. I don’t think I need to provide any additional comments, except maybe privacy is not guaranteed.

Happy Hollow Outhouse

3

Hart Lake – at Risk

Hart Lake – at Risk

Regular readers may remember recent posts showing some of the areas that have burned in the Olympic National Park from the Bear Gulch fire. While burning primarily up the valley of the North Fork Skokomish, the fire has jumped across the Duckabush River valley and is burning a section of forest just east of the Hart Lake area. Since most winds in the area blow from the west or south, hopefully the fire will not spread over to the Hart Lake vicinity. (Fingers crossed).

2

Views of Mt Steel

View of Mt Steel – 1

I take most of my images in color. In the old days, that was film … these days the images provided by most cameras are full color with sensor sites recording red, blue or green. Once you import the image file into a computer, the image can be converted to black and white and adjusted … similar in many ways to the work that was done with film based images while in the darkroom.

These images were of Mt Steel at the upper end of the Duckabush valley in the Olympic National Park.

View of Mt Steel – 2
1

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑