Tag: Elwha River

Elwha River – Downriver from Altair Campground

Elwha River – Downriver from Altair Campground

This is the Elwha River from the bridge next to Altair Campground in Olympic National Park. This was an area between the two dams on the river that have now been removed. I like the way the ridge lines head down in the same direction as the river and the clouds add drama to the sky. This was taken with my Nikon D-850 … so a digital camera. I converted the image to Black and White (B&W) using Adobe Lightroom Classic. I like converting color images to B&W instead of shooting B&W film. With film you would need to use multiple filters to get this same image … and not have a way to check the image before processing. In the computer, you can adjust each color channel to get the effect you want.

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Trail Variations

Elwha Basin

There’s a wide range of trails in the Olympic National Park. Some are well maintained (see below), and some and not so well maintained (like this one). The above image shows the ‘trail’ running above the Elwha Basin to the Elwha Snowfinger and Dodwell-Rixon Pass … one access point for one of the classic backcountry traverses of the Olympics (the Bailey Range Traverse). While I would have liked the basin trail to be well maintained … while we were hiking it … if all the trails were wide and well-maintained, there would be much larger numbers of people hiking them. There are few areas where one can still experience the solitude of nature … lack of trail maintenance protects this solitude. Trail maintenance just needs to be fully funded … there are millions of dollars of maintenance that is backlogged. The trail below is a section of the trail to the Enchanted Valley … another extremely popular destination.

Well-maintained (and well used) Trail in Olympic National Park.
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Trail Shelters

Happy Hollow Shelter

The Olympic National Park has a number of shelters that were built in the 1930’s and later. They don’t get much maintenance and many are in danger of collapse under winter snows. They were originally designed for emergency use, or for those individuals who enjoyed the company of mice. Nowadays, they are just a scenic spot to have lunch … or to camp nearby. The one above is over 26 miles from the Elwha Valley trailhead, just above Chicago Camp … where most folks cross the Elwha and climb up to the Low Divide and drop down to the North Fork Quinault trail.

Trapper Shelter

Trapper Shelter is at 8.5 miles on the North Fork Quinault trail. There hasn’t been legal trapping in the area since the creation of the Olympic National Park in 1938 and the shelter is now just maintained for emergency use (if it gets any maintenance at all).

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Lake Mary

Lake Mary

Low Divide is the pass between the North Fork Quinault and Elwha river valleys of the Olympic National Park. The Divide is a large enough area that there are two small lakes (Margaret and Mary) named by the Press Expedition in the 1890’s. There aren’t a lot of folks hanging out by the lake … for one thing, it’s over 17 miles of hiking to get there (and even longer if you hike up the Elwha instead of the N Fork Quinault).

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