Category: River

North Fork Skokomish Rapids and Loop Trail

N Fk Skokomish Rapids

The North Fork Skokomish valley has some of my favorite hikes. The starting point is at Staircase Ranger Station and Campground at the southeast corner of Olympic National Park and access is open year round … except when the snow has closed the road. But since the elevation is less than 1000 feet (305m), that isn’t too often. The rapids are striking enough that they have built a loop trail of about two miles starting from the ranger station and crossing the river on a very nice bridge about a mile up the river. The image below shows a section of that trail.

Staircase Rapids Loop Trail
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Early Fall

Staircase Camp Area

I have visited the Staircase area of the Olympic National Park probably more than any other location in the park. My first visits were as a teenager, back in the mid-sixties. It has changed quite a bit in the last 60 years or so. Roads have been closed. Immense trees have fallen. New bridges (including more than one at one location, after nature removed one that had replaced an old wooden bridge). But in many ways the area hasn’t changed much. It’s still as beautiful as ever. The river is the North Fork Skokomish.

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N Fork Skokomish Trail and River

N Fork Skokomish Trail

Regular readers will notice that I visit the same locations over and over. The North Fork Skokomish area is one of my favorites and I have gone back dozens of times over the years. It interests me to watch the changes to the valley over the years and during the year. Autumn is one of the times when things are changing rapidly.

N Fork Skokomish River
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N Fork Skokomish Autumn

N Fork Skokomish Autumn

Usually autumn colors in a photo push heavily towards processing in color. I played around with this one with converting to black and white … and emphasizing the yellows and oranges by increasing the highlighting. This was taken along the North Fork Skokomish River trail about 1.5 miles above Staircase Campground in the Olympic National Park. The large trees are Big Leaf Maples, the rest a mixture of alders, willows and other.

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Middle Dosewallips River

Middle Dosewallips River

On our dayhike up the Dosewallips Road/Trail, we hiked about 2.5 miles in. Our original destination was Elkhorn Campground … a drive in camp isolated due to the washout of the Dosewallips (or the “Dose” … pronounced (Doe’-See) road (Olympic National Forest and access to the Olympic National Park). We were almost to the entrance to the campground and saw an abandoned road running over towards the river. We followed that and came to a cement bridge across the Dose that I had never been to before (or at least since the road washed out). There wasn’t much on the southern bank except a brief hint of where the road continued … I identified it as Forest Service road 2353 and a map shows it running across the flats on that side of the river. Who knows when it was constructed … except it must have been for logging. One wonders if the road is reopened, if logging will resume in the Olympic National Forest sections.

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