You can drive to the summit of Mt Walker (4 miles of gravel road after leaving the highway a few mile south of Quilcene WA). The view is different by the minute as the weather changes … in this case the clouds added to the drama. The brownish area in the foreground is the Bangor Naval Base … the water areas are both Puget Sound.
Wild Rhododendron on Mt Walker in the Olympic National Forest.
Mt Walker is about 30 miles SSW of Port Townsend, Washington and while it’s in the Olympic National Forest, it is not in Olympic National Park. There’s a road all the way up to the summit, which is very nice, since the trail is steep: my lungs would complain on the way up and my knees would complain on way down. One of the nice things about Mt Walker is that this time of year there are wild rhododendrons all up and down the mountain. The blooming season at the bottom is pretty much over when the blooming is just beginning up above. The photo is from the south summit viewpoint … the north summit viewpoint looks out over the NW corner of the Olympic Peninsula, including Pt Townsend. The mountain in the distance is Mt Rainier; the nearest water is Hood Canal and there is some of Puget Sound in the distance.
We took a trip up to Mt Walker to enjoy the wild rhododendrons. Mt Walker has quite a dense collection and we caught them in full bloom and it’s a very good year. When I say ‘collection’ I don’t mean to imply that they aren’t wild.
The native rhododendron is the official Washington State Flower.
I was hiking up the Mount Walker trail in the Olympic National Forest recently. It’s a good warm up hike … close to Port Townsend and pretty steep, but short. What I like best is I can drive to the top and hike down until my knees are complaining, then turn around and hike back up. On the return trip, I came around the corner of a switchback and there was a rhododendron highlighted by the sun through a break in the forest canopy.