The Olympic Mountains
The Olympic Peninsula is home to the last old-growth temperate rainforest in N. America. It is also dominated by the Olympic Mountains, a wilderness area only accessible on foot for the most part. However, the north side, facing Juan de Fuca Strait and Canada, is only a few miles from US 101 and Port Angeles; and less than three-hours from Tacoma.
It’s late September and the tourist season is about to end in Olympic National Park, so we fit in a weekend visit to the Log Cabin Resort on Lake Crescent.
The highest peak in the Olympic Mountains is Mount Olympia, standing at 7980 feet, and there are many peaks over 6000 feet. None of them are volcanoes, however; they were formed by collision of N. America with the tectonic plate underlying the Pacific Ocean. I’ll discuss that in another post.
Lake Crescent was created when a landslide blocked the outlet of a valley cut by alpine glaciers over the last couple million years. Its maximum depth is 600 feet, and it contains exceptionally clear water because of a low nitrogen content (no pollution) and thus no algal growth. It is twelve miles long and thus popular with sport boaters. I didn’t see anyone fishing, so maybe no algae means no fish.
We followed the Spruce Railroad Trail 1.7 miles to this tunnel, which is huge when you pass the smaller entrance; however, it is only a couple hundred yards long. Nevertheless, as the sign says, it is very dark inside, especially later in the day. It leads to a favorite site for visitors.
The Spruce Railroad Trail circumnavigates Lake Crescent (about 11 miles), but we didn’t go that far. Devils Punch Bowl is a deep hole with steep cliffs and a walkway. Adventurous young people were leaping into the cold water and sunning on the nearby rocks, but I didn’t see anyone jumping from the top of the cliff more than 60 feet above us.
This is the view from our back yard. I took some photos of the half-moon when it was still light, but this is my favorite because of the moon’s reflection on the still water of Lake Crescent.
We spent a very quiet night in our log cabin, which had a modern heating system and was very cozy, then drove to the Hurricane Ridge trail head. The trail was asphalt paved and climbed about 1000 feet in (supposedly) 1.8 miles. It was steep near the top but wide enough for wheelchairs to use easily. This is the view from the top, which was at an elevation of about 5500 feet; that’s Mount Olympia across a deep valley.
This is the view looking north. That’s Vancouver Island, British Columbia, across the cloud-covered Juan de Fuca Strait. The brighter area above the two peaks is Victoria. We were there last month.
This photo shows the trail we followed along a ridge like those seen in the background. The many sharp peaks are reminiscent of the Cascades Mountains, but these were formed by alpine glaciers in combination with a high uplift rate, rather than volcanic processes.
Final Thoughts
The weather in the Olympic Mountains was exceptionally nice this weekend. The drive was easy and traffic low because it was the last day of the season. Overall, I can’t think of a better place to spend a couple of days.
Try to make it if you’re ever in the Pacific Northwest…between April and September.
The Olympic Peninsula: Quinault Rainforest to Cape Flattery
This is the first in what I hope will become a regular series of blogs from my travels around the Pacific Northwest (PNW) as well as trips throughout the world. This series accompanies my main blog, Rocks and (no) Roads, which reports on the geology of various places to which I travel. You could see I’m expanding my horizons; in addition to posting about general sights in this post, I will also be including environmental and ecological observations that are of interest to me. My background is in geology, but I’ve become aware of a lot more since moving to the PNW. So this is a learning experience, thanks in large part to the availability of expert assistance from CoPilot, Microsoft’s version of ChatGPT. I’ll be turning to it to identify plants and evidence of animal activity in future posts.
This is the base map I’ll be using in many of my posts from the PNW. The star indicates my base in Tacoma. Today’s post describes a two-day trip to circumnavigate the Olympic Peninsula. Although this area is the wettest in the contiguous United States, with annual rainfall up to twelve-feet, it was clear for the duration of my visit. The labeled areas indicate where the photos described below were taken.
Location A: Quinault Rainforest. Photographs can’t do justice to the experience of being surrounded by a temperate rainforest. There are many trails of different lengths, but I followed a shorter one (about one mile) that followed Willaby Creek for a while before turning into the depths of the forest. This image shows the creek rushing by about 50 feet below the trail as it races to the south shore of Lake Quinault.
Location A: Quinault Rainforest. This rotted log is about six-feet in diameter. It is representative of the ongoing decay and rebirth of the forest. I’ll talk more about that in another post. Note the ferns growing out of the decaying wood.
Location A: Quinault Rainforest. There are at least half-a-dozen species of giant evergreen trees in the rainforest, and I can’t identify any of them; but CoPilot suggests it might be a Coast Redwood, part of a local population found in this area. This example is typical in an area known for its “Champion Trees”. We’ll get to that in the next photo.
Location A. Quinault Rainforest. This is the world’s largest Spruce tree. It is 191 feet tall and about 1000 years old. It is one of the six champion trees located in Quinault Valley. The other champion trees are: the world’s largest Western Red Cedar, Douglas Fir, and Mountain Hemlock; and the largest Yellow Cedar and Western Hemlock in the U.S. This tree is growing in a wetland area at the NE end of Lake Quinault.
Halfway between Sites A and B. During my day-trips around the area, I’ve noticed a what appears to be a regional interest in post-industrial art, including but not limited to large concrete facilities that have been left to decay in place, as well as small sculptures and other curiosities scattered throughout the cities and forests. I don’t know if this is intentional or not: the roof of the information board collapsed (no doubt because of 12 feet of rain per year) and was set aside, possibly as a monument to nature?–or evidence of the poor funding and mismanagement of the National Park Service.
Location B: Kalaloch Lodge. This is the view from the deck of the lodge where I spent the night. Kalaloch Creek meanders as it approaches the coast and enters the Pacific Ocean here. An impenetrable pile of driftwood (actually logs and entire trees) has collected on a sand spit deposited on bedrock.
Location B: Beach 4 at Kalaloch. Steep bluffs of glacial till front a wide beach with many exposures of rock, which I’ll discuss in my next post.
Location C: Ruby Beach. This was the last beach before US 101 turned inland for ten miles. I took a video because a series of photos can’t possibly convey the beauty of this location as the sun was rising. Note all the rocks protruding from the water at low tide. The rocks are rising from the earth as we make our way north.
Location C. This selfie demonstrates how chilly it was, with the temperature below 40F. Rock formations like this are called stacks; they are erosional outliers as the coast recedes over millions of years, pounded day and night by rocks carried by waves; and tides that exceed nine feet–twice a day! You have to time your visit accordingly or all you’ll see is water.
Location D: Point Flattery. This is the extreme tip of the contiguous United States. The bedrock we saw further south, at Ruby Beach, now forms wave-cut cliffs that tower 40-80 feet above the waves. The top of the bluffs is 330 feet above sea level. The view from the catwalks is breathtaking. Vancouver Island, BC, is visible in the background, with peaks around 6000 feet.
More PNW Humor. All of the toilets we saw along the coast were constructed over septic tanks, with warnings about what to put in them. Someone with a sense of humor modified just one word of the official message…
If you get the chance, I strongly recommend visiting Olympic National Park, but you’re going to want to spend a week unless you live nearby in the PNW.
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