Tag: Dosewallips Trail

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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Dosewallips Road/Trail

Dosewallips Road/Trail

The Dosewallips Road access to Olympic National Park has been washed out for close to 20 years now … they are still planning on re-routing the access road into the Dosewallips Flats area. Sometime. In the meantime, it’s a great hike, early spring through late autumn. This was October 7th. We hiked in 2.5 miles and back out. The dog was tired. Dog Tired.

Dosewallips Road/Trail 2
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Dosewallips Road/Trail

Dosewallips Road/Trail

Still haven’t heard any late news about the future of the Dosewallips Road. This is in the Olympic National Forest and there is a washout blocking the road about 1/2 mile from this location. This road provides the only road access to the Dosewallips Campground. It’s a 6 mile hike in to the camp at this point … but the campground and surroundings are in Olympic National Park. The different jurisdictions make the problem solving way more difficult. The Forest doesn’t want to pay for the road repair (which has to be done in such a way as to have no negative impact on the river and its salmon habitat) … and any bypass would be partially on private land … another complication.

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Dosewallips Road (washed out)

Dosewallips Road (Washed Out)

This image was sitting around unloved. The problem was that in color it was BORING. I was going through my past shots and hitting the “V” key (while in LIghtroom). That is a shortcut key for converting an image to Black and White. When I got to this image, I stopped. It definitely showed promise, so I spent the additional time on it to adjust it further (the default black and white conversion is pretty generic). A good reminder to never take things at first glance.

The Dosewallips River road was washed out 20 years ago, or so. This section is now closed to motor vehicles, but makes a great walk. The Dosewallips valley is on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula. It has been closed for years while they attempt to come up with a plan to reroute the road without endangering salmon in the river … and keep the cost down (since to move the road away from the river at the wash out point would be an extensive relocation up the hillside).

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