A set of images from the high country of the Olympic National Park. The top one shows the Elwha valley … so a vista. The lower two images show (middle) a Subalpine fir cone, and the bottom one a Doug Fir branch with cones.
High Country Views
Snowy Mountains
I know many folks are wanting to enjoy the warm weather and here I am showing photos of snowy mountains. I was going through some older photos, doing some sorting and organizing and found these two images that with the new editing feature in Lightroom that just really made these two pop. So I figured I’d share. The top photo was taken while snowshoeing at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. I’ve hiked the Elwha Valley many times and always enjoy looking down on it. The image below is the Sierras from the east near Lone Pine, California.
Valley Clouds
The mountains across the valley is the Bailey Range, which run down the center of the Olympic Mountains. The view is from Hurricane Ridge, where there is a visitor center over 5000 feet. The valley full of clouds is the Elwha River … one of the huge success stories in salmon restoration. Two dams that were erected in the early years of the 20th century, without the required salmon ladders, were removed which opened up miles of prime salmon habitat. There used to be 5 species of salmon plus steelhead that called the Elwha home, and some of those have returned … hopefully the rest will eventually follow.
A Surprise Panorama
I was going through and organizing photos from the film days and found that there were a couple of photos that I had taken that could be combined into panoramas. This one was from a hike along Happy Lake Ridge in the Olympic National Park. The view is across the Elwha River valley over to Hurricane Ridge.
The Happy Lake Ridge trail is seldom hiked … even less since the Elwha Road washed out adding miles to access the trailhead. It is a nice loop trail, the upper end dropping down to Boulder Lake and then out through the Boulder Creek Trail and the (undeveloped) Olympic Hot Springs. With the wash out of the road, there are several miles of doubling back to get to the parking lot… but it is still mostly a loop.
End of Trail
The Griff Creek Trail leaves the Olympic Hot Springs Road just behind the Elwha Ranger Station in Olympic National Park. It climbs nearly 3000 feet ( ~ 950 m) in about 2.8 miles (4.5 km). So, it’s pretty steep. It has about 35 switchbacks and then it ends up on the middle of a steep section of hillside. It’s a nice hike with a view at the end of the Elwha Valley and environs.
That’s the end.