The Olympic Mountains rise abruptly from near sea level, with little of the foothill terrain that fronts most ranges. The peaks climb to high elevations within a few miles of the lowlands, a steepness that helped keep the range's interior unexplored well into the late nineteenth century and that still confines roads to the perimeter today.
Notice something odd about how these mountains start? There's almost no warning. Most ranges ease up through rolling foothills, but here the country goes from near sea level to a wall of high peaks in just a few miles, the green front rising up sharp on your left like a curtain dropped across the sky. That steepness is exactly why the interior stayed a mystery so long. There was no gentle way in. The mountains simply stand up out of the lowland and dare you to find a road, and for the most part, no road ever did.
Photo: Dllu · CC BY-SA 4.0
