Another set of images from a recent hike in the Olympic National Park. The top image is looking north from the end of the Blue Mountain road … a short walk takes you to the summit for an unobstructed view in all directions. The top image shows the town of Sequim and the Dungeness Spit, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and some of the San Juan Islands in the distance. The bottom image shows a view from the Grand Ridge Trail running out of Deer Park.
A wonderful hike runs along the Grand Ridge Trail from Deer Park towards Obstruction Point. There is some moderate elevation gain, but the trail starts at Deer Park which is in the subalpine zone, so there is no climb to “the high country”…. just a long dusty drive.
Recently my friend Gary and I rode our eBikes up the Dosewallips Road past the washouts and up to the Dosewallips Campground … a distance of about 6.5 miles (each way). We had great weather and were just doing a day trip … although regular readers may note that another friend and I have made several trips up the road backpacking.
I carried my camera and the day was a great success, based on how much fun we had. During the bouncy ride, I lost my lens cap, but that’s why they sell extras, isn’t it?
Spring covers a wide range of changes to the forests and lowlands of the Olympic National Park. The high country doesn’t start being snow-free until summer … spring in the high country means snow travel. Lower down, the rivers can be running quite low … if the snow isn’t melting higher in the valleys and it’s not raining. The image above is at under 1000 feet elevation and shows the river running fairly low after a couple days of cool dry weather.
The image below shows a group of backpackers that had been up to Big Timber Camp on the West Fork of the Dosewallips. Big Timber is at 2300 feet and they reported 5 feet of hard packed snow at that point. You need good insulation between you and the ground to sleep on snow …
The image at the bottom shows the view up to the high country and the remaining snow in the trees. The area shown has melted out more, since it is open to the south and the sun is starting to do its thawing out trick.
This is the Mt Elinor trail in the southeast corner of the Olympic Mountains (outside the Park). It gets a lot of visitors … both in the spring for folks warming up their snow climbing skills … and in the summer when the trail is very crowded and gets pretty trashed out from thoughtless hikers.
Just for folks that don’t live in (or visit) bear country: A bear wire is a convenience for backpackers to hang food to keep it up and out of reach of bears. A heavy steel cable is run between two tress about 12 to 15 feet off the ground. The best ones have pulleys and cables to run your food bags up the the wire, the old versions required you to have cord or rope to throw over the wire. One of my gripes is that the maintenance of bear wires is lacking … the Olympic National Park has neglected the bear wires in favor of requiring (or strenuously recommending) bear proof canisters. These typically weight about 2 pounds. When you are getting up in years, that two pounds can make a pretty big difference in the pleasure of the trail.
This trail sign was on the Aurora Ridge Trail in the Olympic National Park. The trail is visited very infrequently … and the maintenance showed it. I only hiked a short section, there wasn’t any vista or destination within my dayhike range, so I just climbed up to the ridge line and then along the ridge for a mile or two before turning around.