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| Backpack | 40.50 Miles |
6,050 AEG |
| | Backpack | 40.50 Miles | 3 Days | | |
| 6,050 ft AEG | | 35 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | | We were up in the Pacific Northwest visiting some friends who live in Seattle, and I was quite happy to be able to get away for a 3 day backpack trip in the Olympics! I motored out with my friend Jake who lives in Seattle off to the Quinalt River Valley on the southwest side of the Olympic peninsula. This is a fairly heavily used area of the park, but we figured starting the Monday after a long weekend would thin out the crowds. We definitely saw many other hikers, up here everybody seems to understand the hikers' etiquette, at least better than I am used to...I did post a GPS track of the hike but the stats are off, mileage was reported low and the elevation was reported way high, we were hiking through oldgrowth forest for about 2/3rds of this hike and I noticed my GPS was jumping around all over the place. We did have a detailed TOPO map of the valley (good old fashioned paper copy), stats are reported off of this for accuracy's sake. Our visit was much warmer than we planned, the highs were around 80-82 the whole time we were there. Doesn't sound like much, but the sun is definitely more intense at this latitude, plus the humidity had to have been as high as you can get without rain actually falling on your head. The sheer biomass from the forest is incredible. Large Douglas Fir and Hemlock serve as the top stories, with berry bushes, ferns, mosses, lichens, and other green things taking up every available space. We hiked in about 14 miles the first day to get to the Enchanted Valley camp area, this was a clearing in the valley by an old ski chalet that had been there since the 30's. After it was abandoned, the building was rededicated as a ranger station. This was closed and bolted down this season, the East Fork of the Quinalt River has changed its course and is now undercutting the foundation, the lodge might only last another year or two before it gets washed out. There were a few large groups camped out already when we got there, but we found a few nice sandy spots for our tents on the gravel bar and made a beautiful camp. Our views overlooked a good 10 waterfalls along the ridge to the northeast, some of which started from 4000' above and crashed down in multi-tiered glory. These were all seasonal snowmelt or glacier runoff, pretty darn impressive. For day two we left camp set up and started off with thankfully much lighter packs on our way up to Anderson Pass. We got in the majority of our elevation today, and rose out of the forest after a few miles on the trail. Once we made it to Anderson Pass we hiked up the very steep use trail up to the Anderson Glacier overlook, we also saw the frozen melt pond that forms the headwaters for the Quinalt River, our water source and basic guide for most of our trip. After a good break up top, we started making our way back down to camp, we ended up with a little over 12 miles for day 2, and about 3500' of gain. One more great night in camp before making the trek out in the morning. I did surprise a deer not too far from camp, but she was not too concerned about me and just kept on preening herself. We didn't see any bears in the flesh, but certainly lots of signs (scat and many raided berry bushes). This hike was much harder in the flesh than what it looked like on paper, the humidity was brutal for a desert rat like myself. I found it hard to keep much of an appetite despite all the efforts, lost a few pounds on this trip. Ended up hauling a bunch of gear for cold and snow travel that we ended up never using, but better safe than sorry, this can be a very unpredictable area weather-wise. Can't wait for my next trip up this way, so much to explore! |
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