Tag: Elwha

Hurricane Ridge Wildflowers

Looking South

I recently did a day drive up to Hurricane Ridge In Olympic National Park. The road runs up into the alpine area, which makes it nice if you are carrying a bunch of camera equipment. The top photo is looking south into the center of the park and the Elwha River valley. The end of June is a good time for wild flowers, since most of the snow has left. I was able to find a trail where I was by myself and not packed in with all the other folks (they were mostly hiking trails near the main parking lot or Hurricane Hill).

The second image is Olympic Onion, which is described as being rare. I’ve seen it a few times and it smells strongly of onion. Since I’ve never seen it in huge masses, I’ve never harvested any for enhancing the flavor of my backpacking food. (although it sure would help)

Third image is larkspur … which competes with lupine in the blue/purple assemblage.

Olympic Onion
Larkspur

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Ah, a reminder of Summer

Reminder of Summer

I was going through some past photos and came across this one that improved dramatically when I spent some time with it in Lightroom. It was from a backpack trip up the Elwha River valley in the Olympic National Park a few years ago. A nice hike … especially since it was before the road washed out and so was 10 miles shorter than it would be today. Just one of the many unnamed streams.

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Snowy Mountains

Elwha Valley in Winter December 2015

I know many folks are wanting to enjoy the warm weather and here I am showing photos of snowy mountains. I was going through some older photos, doing some sorting and organizing and found these two images that with the new editing feature in Lightroom that just really made these two pop. So I figured I’d share. The top photo was taken while snowshoeing at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. I’ve hiked the Elwha Valley many times and always enjoy looking down on it. The image below is the Sierras from the east near Lone Pine, California.

Sierras from the East March 2017
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Valley Clouds

Valley Clouds

The mountains across the valley is the Bailey Range, which run down the center of the Olympic Mountains. The view is from Hurricane Ridge, where there is a visitor center over 5000 feet. The valley full of clouds is the Elwha River … one of the huge success stories in salmon restoration. Two dams that were erected in the early years of the 20th century, without the required salmon ladders, were removed which opened up miles of prime salmon habitat. There used to be 5 species of salmon plus steelhead that called the Elwha home, and some of those have returned … hopefully the rest will eventually follow.

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