These are trees above the Sol Duc vallely in the Olympic National Park on the Deer Lake Trail. While it wasn’t raining on this day, I haven’t spent much time in the Sol Duc valley without it getting cloudy, foggy, rainy, or at least drippy. And I’m not exactly sure if the Sol Duc meets the definition of a rain forest. The next valley down does meet the rainfall requirements … as do the next 3 major valleys after that. (Bogachiel, Hoh, Queets and Quinault)
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.
On the trail to Sol Duc Falls (see previous post), we had to walk across many little streams that were running down to the river. This was one that caught my eye. It was raining, which made the ferns shine … and the stream had water running in it (it dries up in the middle of summer). I’m not sure what has opened up the area around the stream. Mostly this area of the Olympic National Park is a dense stand of huge old trees.
We hiked to Sol Duc Falls on the first day of the government shutdown. The ranger station / toll booth was closed so I didn’t have to show my lifetime pass. The Sol Duc River is on the Northwest corner of the Olympic National Park … there is a fully commercialized hot springs about 2 miles below the falls … getting to the falls is a short hike (about .7 miles or 1.1 km) up the Sol Duc Trail – which is a section of the High Divide Loop … the most heavily visited back country area in the park. It’s a well maintained trail, but has a lot of exposed roots from having the dirt eroded away from the hikers constant tread.
I don’t know what kind of reeds these are (hard to tell from the photo) but they sure made an interesting pattern floating on the small pond near the ‘entrance’ to Sol Duc Park. Sol Duc Park is about 7 miles up the Sol Duc Trail, most of the way to Heart Lake and part of the very popular High Divide Loop in the Olympic National Park.