In late July and early August, my friend Josh Miller and I took five days to hike through the Olympic National Park. Our original plan? Three nights of reserved camping, with a fourth that we would squeeze in somewhere, and about 18 miles of loop plus a bunch of little spurs. What happened? Our ranger Molly at the Hurricane Ridge station gave us the once over, told us our original planned trail was \”stupid crowded,\” plus the road had just been closed due to an accident, and put us on something much more ambitious: 45 miles, five mountain passes, and views that put our original hike, one of the most popular in the park, to shame.
The two of us travel well together. We had great conversations, did some meditation and yoga, a little skinny-dipping, managed to cook some really good food, and made it through to the end with next to no drama. We encountered lots of wildlife, including bear tracks and what may have been a large cat that had been nearby a little too recently for my comfort. But we also got to see frogs, marmots, plenty of deer and playful fawns, some ptarmigans, and tadpoles in a glacial pool that seemed a little too large and primordial than the frogs they would supposedly become.
My feet and family are happy I\’m home, but it was such a peaceful, enjoyable, beautiful and fun experience. And very much a learning experience when it came to packing and testing your gear. While every step felt like an accomplishment (particularly toward the end), reaching the top of each of those five passes was an accomplishment. Especially with 40 pounds of gear on my back.
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- Day 1: Deer Park trailhead to Three Forks. 4.1 miles, straight downhill.
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- The starting line. We're so fresh!
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- The view from the trailhead. Little did we know how mundane this would seem.
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- And we are now entering the woods.
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- Day 1 complete. 4.1 miles straight downhill. We're camped at the confluence of two rivers.Time for dinner.
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- Day 2: Three Forks to just below Gray Wolf Pass. 9.5 miles, all climbing.
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- First order of business on day 2: cross the bridge.
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- What it looked like from that log bridge.
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- The morning was a light, steady ascent in mossy forest like this.
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- We came across a lot of obstacles in our path. This one was by far the largest. We came across a trail worker with a chainsaw not long after who hoped to make a dent to restore the trail.
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- There's a fungus among us!
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- The mossy trail continues through lunch.
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- Once we finished our lunch, though, things got serious.
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- Our first big ascent.
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- Hello, knobby!
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- Yellow blackberries!
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- Thimbleberries!
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- Blueberries!
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- When we got out of the trees, we saw this.
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- Yes, this was a feature of the trail.
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- Little did we know that we would, before long, be at the top of that.
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- This is where we slept on night 2, just below our first mountain pass. That's a glacial lake.
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- Still some snow at the edge of the lake, with a stream that dropped off into this view.
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- Sunset.
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- Day 3: Gray Wolf Pass to Lower Cameron. Two passes, 8.8 miles.
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- Chef Josh with breakfast!
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- We started day 3 with the last vegetation before we hit the pass. So lush from the runoff!
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- Josh gets a feel for our first snow field.
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- The top of our very first pass, Gray Wolf Pass.
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- Proof!
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- More proof that we didn't pay some joker to take the picture for us!
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- A little moment of foot photograpy before we hoofed it down the other side of the pass.
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- And the feet themselves.
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- We saw some crazy sites in addition to the beautiful things, like this tree that had clearly seen better days.
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- Pass #2. Yes, we climbed that. After we gave our feet a rest and watched the frogs as we collected more water from the Dosewallips.
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- Okay, time to climb.
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- The view from the top of our second pass of the day.
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- And we made it! Pass #2 for the day.
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- Can you tell how steep it would be if we went over the side? This is tame compared to some of the high-elevation spots where the path was scarcely visible and made up of loose stones that had a long way to go down.
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- We hiked until we reached water. This is the view from our bedroom.
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- The beginning of sunset.
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- Day 4: Lower Cameron to Grand Lake. Two passes, 9.1 miles.
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- Maybe Josh isn't quite the messiah, but he's close.
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- And a lovely start to our day. The flatness didn't last long.
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- By 9 am we had climbed to here.
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- And higher.
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- And even higher.
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- Hello up there!
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- This little tree marks the point where we reached timberline. And we still had more to go.
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- The top of Cameron pass, looking west.
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- We made it!
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- The top of Cameron Pass, looking east. Much more stark than what we came from.
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- Can anybody else see the peace dove in the snow field?
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- Next destination: All the way down there. But we had to make our way down these rocks first.
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- We practically slid down the rocky face, but not far below was the source of one of the rushing rivers where we slept on our first night.
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- We had a little someone cross our trail as we continued. She hardly paid us attention, as long as we kept quiet.
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- Up above is where we came from. The doe didn't seem to care.
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- Just a little traverse.
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- A little further down from the source the water got serious.
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- Wildflowers were out and lovely. This is a field of lupin.
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- Yes, we're heading up.
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- But first: butterflies!
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- We thought we were near the top of Grant Pass, but not quite. We had to climb hand over hand to get to the next part of the ascent.
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- This is the bowl we encountered after more than an hour of straight uphill, including the hand-over-hand to get to this spot. See the cloud? But we're not there yet.
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- Rising above the clouds, and the grassy field.
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- We've got a way to go.
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- A glacial pool partway up the bowl.
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- The last part of the pass was just as rocky as you can see here, only much steeper. About 20 vertical feet and two switchbacks from the top, we encountered our first people in more than 26 hours—including an 8-year-old kid!
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- We made it!
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- The view around
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- The other side of the pass.
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- Can you see who was also at the top?
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- This is where we climbed down from. Much more lush the further down we got. Also quite a bit more crowded.
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- Until here, the days had been fairly hot, but the fog started to roll through and it got downright chilly.
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- Lots of deer as we got to the lower elevations before we reached Grand Lake, including this little fawn taking a flying leap..
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- Day 5: Grand Lake to the Deer Park trailhead. One pass, 11.9 miles.
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- Though we set up camp about 50 feet way from the lake, we could hardly see it with all of the fog. Fortunately it cleared up for our final day.
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- Sunrise.
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- Our last possible place to get water for the entire day. A first on this trip that we didn't encounter water at one point or another.
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- This was our first climb for the day.
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- We made it! This path would have taken us to the peak of Obstruction point. We still had 9 miles to go.
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- We really felt as if we were on top of the world as we walked along the Obstruction Point ridgeline. Mountains every which way around.
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- I felt like we were in the Sound of Music.
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- Mountains as far as the eye could see.
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- Just before this we encountered our first cars in nearly five days, at the Obstruction Point parking lot. Thankfully we rounded the corner and couldn't see them again.
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- Well hello, Mr. Marmot!
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- After being near the top of the mountain we were traversing for so long, we finally got to see the other side: a total moonscape.
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- See the lake in the background? That's where we slept the previous night.
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- Another hiker had lunch right next to this guy. Apparently he kept trying to nose in and steal the guy's food.
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- This was our view from lunch.
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- We really felt like we were on top of the world.
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- This is probably the only picture that shows how treacherous some areas of the trail could be. In spots it was scarcely two feet wide, and one wrong step meant you went a long, long way down.
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- All that gray is cloud. We couldn't see what was around the bend, it was so thick.
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- We had a slow descent from the top of Hurricane Ridge (too treacherous—no way we were taking pictures!). Clearly the moss is winning.
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- And finally, we made it! The last mile was almost entirely uphill—and unexpected. We were not happy about it. But we were happy about the ranger who threw our gear into his pickup and delivered us the last half mile to our car!
