Hiking : Hurricane Hill

To get to Hurricane Ridge, you drive from the town of Port Angeles into the mountains and go up and up and up until you've gone 17 miles and are suddenly on top of the world in the middle of the mountains. You can basically drive up there, take a photo, go to the gift shop, and leave, but we wanted to do something slightly more memorable, so we went on a hike! We wanted do it back in April, but we would have needed snowshoes to do it then (and apparently it can stay snowy through July!). Luckily, we didn't have those problems in early September, although it was pretty chilly when we started our hike in the morning! 

The trail basically follows a ridge out to a high point, where you can get an even better view of the mountains than at the visitor center. For that reason, it's only 3 miles roundtrip but 950' in elevation gain - so basically straight up from the parking lot. Our hiking book warned us of crowds of tourists, so we started out as early as we could and didn't see many hikers on the way out. We did have plenty of views, though, and they were incredible! All along one side of the ridge were the huge Olympic mountains (including Mount Olympus itself). On the other side was the town of Port Angeles, the strait of Juan de Fuca, Vancouver Island, and mainland British Columbia. The picture below pretty accurately sums it up - - - 

Not bad, huh? 

Well, we huffed and puffed our way to the top (it wasn't that bad...and I blame the 6,000' elevation for any puffing!) and were rewarded with a panoramic view of everything all at once. We walked close enough to some deer to pet them - and heard the calls of the Olympic marmot! It was a little exciting, since before moving here, I didn't even know what a marmot was.

We had a snack at the top, noticed that the deer family had followed us up, stared at the mountains until we couldn't stare anymore, and headed back down. The throngs of people our book had warned us about were coming the other way - so we were happy we set out earlier! (See the tiny tiny dots of people on the left in the above picture? That's because we're so much higher than them, even though it looks flat!) It was a perfect hike and we were so happy we did it - we got to experience being in the mountains without being super knowledgable backpackers. Someday, we might try that, but for now it was nice to do something more accessible. 

Here's one last photo, a panorama I put together in Photoshop - - - click on it to see it full size! 

Hiking : Lake Crescent

We decided earlier this summer that before we left to go back east, we needed to visit Olympic National Park again! It was so nice when we visited in the spring, and it has lots of things that we can only see out here - like huge mountains, elk, and the Pacific Ocean! Our second trip was a quicker trip - two nights instead of four - so we concentrated on one small corner of the park. When we visited in the spring, two of the places we wanted to visit weren't open yet for the year - Lake Crescent Lodge and Hurricane Ridge. 

Lake Crescent is a big lake carved by glaciers that's so clear and blue, it reminded us of the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Pacific Northwest. The lodge was really cute, but we didn't stay for long since we wanted to do a hike along the lake. The trail we went on was called Spruce Railroad Trail - it followed the path of an old railroad that was once used for logging. Our hiking book rated it highly, and we'd never hiked on a trail along a lake before, so it was settled! It was a little bit confusing because the main trailhead was closed and the other trailhead wasn't completely clear, but after a bit of driving, we finally arrived!

The trail started out wide, flat, and paved but eventually became more of a real trail through the woods. The forest was really pretty and the lake was even better! We saw the lodge again, from way across the lake. We pretty much just marvelled at the perfect water the whole way. Luckily, there weren't too many obstacles in the path to watch out for! We only passed a few people the entire time and felt lucky that we had the whole thing to ourselves. Well, us and some deer - - -

Day Trip - Mt. St. Helens

Living in Portland, it's hard to miss Mt. St. Helens. Every time we drive to the Post Office, we see it. Any time we shop at Target or Ikea, we see it. It's like Mt. Hood - it's "out" in nice weather, it looks pretty right before sunset, and it has snow on it well into the summer. Except we'd never visited - so we decided to change that. It's about a two hour drive from Portland, since (unlike Mt. Hood) it's tucked away into National Forest land without any major roads nearby. 

We decided to do two hikes once we got there - the Hummocks Trail and the Boundary Trail. On the drive in, we got a few peeks at the volcano but arrived at the trailhead for the Hummocks loop in the midst of a pretty forest. We were expecting everything to still be barren from the eruption but it's actually really green in some areas! 

We walked through the forest, spotted lots of pretty wildflowers, and then the mountain was suddenly in front of us when we came around a bend! It looks so peaceful, it's hard to imagine the whole top of it blowing off instantly. The area we hiked in was full of "hummocks" - rocky hills created by debris from the landslide. It was a really unique hike, weaving in and out of the trees and the open desert-y landscape.

After our "warm up" hike, we headed farther up the slopes to the visitors center at Johnston Ridge. We'd only passed a few hikers, but there were all kinds of people at the visitors center! Tour buses and lots of people speaking other languages - I had no idea it was such a popular destination, nationally and internationally! We had a snack and set out on our second hike. It followed a high ridge that faces Mt. St. Helens - with perfect views the whole way.

Most of the hike curved around hills and the top of the ridge, but near our turnaround point, it clung to the edge of a steep rocky slope. It warned us not to go any further if we had a fear of heights and it turns out that we don't - so that's good to know! We ended at a curve in the trail with a perfect view - we looked at Mt. St. Helens from directly opposite the crater, could see the peak of Mt. Adams, Spirit Lake, and the whole area in front of us was what was most affected by the eruption. It was really incredible to see everything in person - we'd always heard about the eruption, but never knew how devastating it was to the area nearby. Everywhere we looked from up on the ridge, we could see flattened tree trunks fanning outward from where they were knocked over from the volcanic blast. I guess I always thought nature worked faster - it's been over 30 years and those trees haven't rotted away yet! 

It was a perfect hike and a perfect time of day, especially on our return hike. The trail continued on all the way to Mt. Adams, but it was time for us to head home!

Olympic Trip : Day Five - Dungeness Spit

On our last day up on the Olympic Peninsula, we decided to stop at Dungeness National Wildlife Preserve and do a short hike along Dungeness Spit. We found all of the hikes we did in a hiking book we brought along, Day Hiking the Olympic Peninsula - we really love this hiking book. It has really in-depth descriptions of every trail, an elevation profile, difficulty and overall ratings. We have another of his books for the gorge and it's just as nice! This hike actually goes for 11 miles, 5 miles of which is along this spit, to a lighthouse that's manned. We didn't have time for the whole 11 mile trip, so we just wandered around the beach for a mile or so.

It was the perfect end to our vacation! A four-hour drive home, mostly through the eastern portion of the Olympic Peninsula, past lots of scenic landscapes and little towns. Now that we've finally been up there, we're excited to go back again. It's so close, and with so many things to do! Hopefully we'll be back up there before too long.