Tag: Olympic National Park

Hiking In The Fog

Hiking in the Fog – 1

Going through my hiking photos from years past. I didn’t take nearly as many photos when it was foggy or misty or raining. Since I primarily hiked in the Olympic National Park, that meant that I had my camera in the pack a lot of days. After a while I got a couple of different waterproof (or resistant) cameras … first a Minolta and then a Nikonos. But the Minolta didn’t have a real good lens on it and the Nikonos was a brick. Like real heavy. I was delighted when I found the digital cameras became available in a waterproof, rugged vesion (my favorite was the Nikon AW series). These were all taken the same day, but I’m not sure what camera. It was film, though.

Hiking in the Fog – 2
Hiking in the Fog – 3
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Snowy Landscapes

Snow in May in Yellowstone

Yes, I’ve been going through my archives and finding delightful images that I had forgot about and were a pleasure to revisit. The image above was in Yellowstone … and if my memory serves me correct, was taken along Yellowstone Lake. We had visited in mid-May and had a few days of nice sunny weather and then it started to snow. Below is Lake Quinault just outside the southwest corner of Olympic National Park. You can’t see a lot of snow, but it’s mid-December and the elevation here is pretty low, so a lot of the precipitation falls as rain. I mean, it is one of the classic the rain forests, after all.

Lake Quinault and the Southwest Olympics
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The Dosewallips

The Dosewallips River

The Dosewallips River is one of the major rivers draining the east side of the Olympic Peninsula. The photo above was taken from the old car campground that is now backpack in only, since the road washed out over 20 years ago. (it’s about 6.5 miles – about 10.5 km) It is in the Olympic National Park, but the access road is in the Olympic National Forest. So, who’s responsible for fixing the road? Let’s argue about it for another decade or so…

Below shows the trail not far outside of the campground. It’s beautiful country and it’s too bad that it is so much harder for seniors to access these days.

Dosewallips Trail
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Water Quality in the High Country

Filtering Water from Heart Lake

Back when I was hiking in the ’60’s and ’70’s, we just drank water out of streams and lakes if they seemed like they were ‘safe’. We looked for running water, especially if it had enough of a drop to it to get aerated. We figured the oxygen cleaned it up. I had friends that kept that philosophy up through the ’90’s. I started filtering water much earlier than that … about the first that backpacking filters became available. These photos are both taken at Heart Lake in the upper Sol Duc valley in the Olympic National Park. The photo below shows how the lake got its name.

The Heart Shape of Heart Lake
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Mt Olympus

Mt Olympus

This is a view of Mt Olympus from the High Divide, which runs across the Hoh River Valley from Olympus on the north side. The High Divide is one of the most popular hikes in the Olympic National Park … with views like this, there’s a good reason for it. (Reservations are required and are hard to get.)

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