These are the last shots from my recent trip up to Deer Park in the Olympic National Park. In the panorama below, the three valleys (from left to right) are the Graywolf River, Cameron Creek and Grand Creek. Where they all run together is the Three Forks Shelter.
We took a break while on our walk up at Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park on May 3rd. While we were enjoying a snack and the view, we had this raven come in to visit (and/or beg for some of our snacks). Its beak is open, but it wasn’t squawking. I think it was trying to cool off … it was a record warm day (for May 3rd) and I don’t think it was used to the temperature.
Taking advantage of beautiful warm spring weather, we went up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park. The views were stunning, but comparing the view (above) with a photo from about the same spot back 5 years ago and three weeks later in May shows that we have a very low snowpack this year.
For another view, this time looking down the Elwha River valley. This one is a little more difficult to compare snowfields, because they are similar and both are a long ways away.
These are trees above the Sol Duc vallely in the Olympic National Park on the Deer Lake Trail. While it wasn’t raining on this day, I haven’t spent much time in the Sol Duc valley without it getting cloudy, foggy, rainy, or at least drippy. And I’m not exactly sure if the Sol Duc meets the definition of a rain forest. The next valley down does meet the rainfall requirements … as do the next 3 major valleys after that. (Bogachiel, Hoh, Queets and Quinault)
Yes, I’ve been going through my archives and finding delightful images that I had forgot about and were a pleasure to revisit. The image above was in Yellowstone … and if my memory serves me correct, was taken along Yellowstone Lake. We had visited in mid-May and had a few days of nice sunny weather and then it started to snow. Below is Lake Quinault just outside the southwest corner of Olympic National Park. You can’t see a lot of snow, but it’s mid-December and the elevation here is pretty low, so a lot of the precipitation falls as rain. I mean, it is one of the classic the rain forests, after all.
