Olympic National Park

The northern gateway to Olympic National Park, reached from Port Angeles on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Olympic is a UNESCO World Heritage Site protecting three distinct worlds — glaciated mountains, temperate rainfor…

U.S. Highway 101 leaves Port Angeles heading west along the base of the Olympic Mountains. Port Angeles is the peninsula's largest town and a working deepwater port, handling cargo ships and a passenger ferry across t…

The Olympic Discovery Trail is a multi-use, largely paved path being developed across the northern Olympic Peninsula, much of it on a former logging-railroad grade. When complete it will stretch well over a hundred mi…

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…

Heading west out of Port Angeles, you cross one of the sharpest climate divides in North America: the Olympic rain shadow. On the sheltered, leeward side the town of Sequim collects only about sixteen inches of rain a…

Where U.S. Highway 101 crosses the Elwha River, the water carries sediment freed by the removal of two upstream dams. With the dams gone, sand and gravel long trapped behind them now reach the sea, rebuilding beaches…

The Olympic Peninsula supports a healthy population of cougars, also called mountain lions, the region's largest predator. Solitary and elusive, they follow deer and elk through the forested lowlands and mountains and…

Isolation by ice and water allowed roughly two dozen animal species to evolve uniquely in the Olympic Mountains, including the Olympic snow mole and the Olympic chipmunk. Cut off from surrounding populations, the peni…

The northern Olympic Peninsula is the homeland of the Klallam, or S'Klallam, people, whose name is commonly translated as the strong people. Today they form several federally recognized nations along the strait, inclu…

Mountain goats introduced to the Olympic high country in the 1920s were not native and damaged fragile alpine plants over the following decades. In a recent multi-year effort, the National Park Service captured the go…

Until the late nineteenth century, the interior of the Olympic Mountains remained unmapped by settlers and shrouded in rumor. The Press Expedition set out to cross the range in the winter of 1889 and spent nearly six…

The Marymere Falls trail is a 1.8-mile round-trip route from the Storm King Ranger Station on Lake Crescent, gaining about 500 feet near the end. After passing through a tunnel beneath Highway 101, it follows Barnes C…

Marymere Falls is reached by an easy forest hike of about one and three-quarter miles round trip from the Storm King ranger station, mostly flat with a short climb at the end. The shaded trail follows Barnes Creek thr…

During World War One the U.S. military built the Spruce Railroad along the north shore of Lake Crescent to extract Sitka spruce, prized for aircraft construction. The line was completed just as the war ended in 1918 a…

Lake Crescent is among the deepest lakes in Washington, plunging more than six hundred feet. Its famous clarity and intense blue come from very low nitrogen levels, which limit the algae that would otherwise cloud the…

Lake Crescent is home to two trout found essentially nowhere else: the Beardslee and the Crescenti, distinct forms of rainbow and cutthroat trout that evolved in isolation after a landslide cut the lake off from the s…

Much of the forest bordering U.S. Highway 101 on the peninsula is even-aged second growth that regrew after past logging, recognizable by its uniform height and spacing. Interspersed are remnant patches of structurall…

Rivers draining the protected Olympic interior are exceptionally clean and cold because their headwaters lie within roadless wilderness, free of agriculture, industry, and development upstream. This unbroken protectio…

The Sol Duc Road leaves Highway 101 west of Lake Crescent and runs about thirteen miles up the Sol Duc River valley to a trailhead and hot-springs resort. The name Sol Duc derives from a Quileute word often translated…

Olympic National Park covers roughly 922,000 acres, about ninety-five percent of it designated wilderness with no roads at all. The highway and its short spur roads reach only the park's outer margins, while the vast…

Olympic National Park is recognized by the United Nations as both a World Heritage Site, for its outstanding natural value, and an international biosphere reserve, used as a scientific benchmark for studying intact ec…

An Army expedition led by Lieutenant Joseph O'Neil explored the Olympic range around the same period as the Press Expedition and made the first recorded ascent of a peak of Mount Olympus. Convinced the region was too…

Precipitation on the western Olympic Peninsula is highly seasonal. The bulk falls during a long, wet winter of successive Pacific storms from autumn into spring, while midsummer is often relatively dry and mild. This…

West of Lake Crescent, U.S. Highway 101 enters the rainy western side of the Olympic Peninsula, where the forest grows noticeably denser and greener. Spur roads branching from this stretch of highway lead travelers up…

This stretch of Highway 101 runs through the western, windward flank of the Olympic Mountains, where moist Pacific air is forced upward and cooled into near-constant low cloud and fog. The persistent humidity, soft li…

Mount Olympus, the highest peak in the range at just under eight thousand feet, lies hidden in the interior west of this road. Despite its modest elevation, its position directly in the path of Pacific storms gives it…

Far to the northwest, the peninsula ends at Cape Flattery on Makah land at Neah Bay — outside the park, so a park pass won't work; a Makah recreation permit runs about twenty dollars. Along the park's wild northwest c…

Rivers draining the glaciated high country, including the Hoh, often appear a milky gray-blue. The tint comes from glacial flour, rock pulverized so finely by moving ice that the particles remain suspended in the wate…

Archaeological shell middens along the Olympic Peninsula's shores and rivers, accumulated layers of shell, bone, and charcoal from village life, document continuous human occupation stretching back many thousands of y…

The Olympic interior is prized for its natural quiet, with long intervals free of any human-made sound. Researchers study the peninsula as one of the last places in the contiguous United States with such low human-cau…

Olympic's boundaries were assembled gradually: established as Mount Olympus National Monument in 1909, redesignated a national park in 1938, then expanded over following decades to add the rainforest river valleys and…

In the rainforest, fallen trees become nurse logs. Tree seedlings establish along the elevated, decaying trunks, gaining access to light above the saturated forest floor. As the original log fully decomposes, the surv…

Temperate rainforests, cool and wet rather than tropical, are globally rare, occurring on only a few mist-prone coastlines worldwide. The western Olympic valleys hold one of the finest examples. This scarcity makes th…

State Route one ten leaves Highway one oh one west of Forks and runs toward the Pacific through the homeland of the Quileute Tribe. The corridor passes from interior conifer forest into coastal spruce country before r…

The marbled murrelet is a small seabird that feeds at sea but nests inland, laying a single egg on the broad, mossy limbs of old-growth conifers high above the forest floor. Its nesting habits long eluded researchers.…

Gas in Forks runs higher than in Port Angeles or Amanda Park, so top off where it's cheaper if you can — but this is the last dependable fuel, food, and phone signal before the Hoh Rain Forest and the Pacific beaches,…

The mosses, ferns, and lichens draping the rainforest canopy are epiphytes, plants that grow on other plants without parasitizing them. They absorb water and nutrients directly from rain and air rather than from their…

The banana slug, a bright yellow mollusk reaching six inches or more, is a key decomposer in the temperate rainforest. It feeds on fallen leaves, fungi, and detritus using a radula bearing tens of thousands of tiny te…

Beneath the Olympic rainforest floor lies a vast network of mycorrhizal fungi, which connect to tree roots in a mutual exchange: the fungi supply water and minerals while receiving sugars in return. These underground…

Olympic National Park includes roughly seventy-three miles of wilderness Pacific coastline, among the longest undeveloped coastal stretches remaining in the contiguous United States. Much of this shoreline was added t…

The western Olympic rainforest is dominated by four conifer species, each favoring different conditions: Sitka spruce near the coast and rivers, western hemlock regenerating on decaying wood, Douglas-fir reaching the…

The waters off the Olympic coast are known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Persistent fog, hidden reefs, and powerful storms have caused roughly two hundred shipwrecks here over the years. Memorials along the shoreli…

Along this part of the route, old-growth rainforest meets the Pacific shore with little development between them. The abrupt transition from towering, moss-laden forest directly to wilderness beach is increasingly rar…

Offshore sea stacks are a defining feature of the Olympic coast. These isolated rock pillars are erosion-resistant remnants of a former shoreline; over time the surrounding softer rock wore away, leaving the harder fo…

As Highway 101 nears the Pacific, the dense coastal forest opens onto wide ocean horizons. After many miles enclosed by tall timber, travelers reach the first sweeping views of the open sea, beaches, and offshore rock…

At low tide, the Olympic coast's rocky benches expose tide pools rich with intertidal life, including sea stars, sea anemones, hermit crabs, mussels, and barnacles. These organisms are adapted to survive the twice-dai…

Olympic's wilderness beaches are piled with massive driftwood: entire trees, often a hundred feet long and weighing several tons, torn from riverbanks by floods, carried to sea, and cast back ashore by winter storms.…

The Olympic coast lies on the migration route of the eastern Pacific gray whale, which travels roughly ten thousand miles round trip between breeding lagoons in Baja California and Arctic feeding grounds. Spring is th…

Ruby Beach is the only spot where Highway 101 meets the open ocean inside the park, named for the garnet-red grains in its sand. A short, steep path leads down to sea stacks, piled driftwood, and tide pools full of se…

The exposed Olympic coast receives the full force of prevailing onshore winds and Pacific storms, with no landmass to break them. The constant salt-laden wind prunes coastal trees into a flagged, leaning shape and dri…

The offshore rocks and islands along the Olympic coast form part of a national wildlife refuge closed to public access. In summer they host large breeding colonies of seabirds, including tufted puffins, common murres,…

The Olympic Mountains form a roughly radial drainage system, with major rivers, including the Hoh, Quinault, Queets, Elwha, and Sol Duc, flowing outward in all directions from the high interior to the surrounding sea.…

Kalaloch — say "klay-lock" — is the south coast's hub, with a bluff-top lodge, a campground over the beach, and a ranger station, all just off Highway 101. Nearby Beach 4 offers some of the park's best tide-pooling, w…

Just north of the Kalaloch campground, off Highway 101, the Tree of Life is a mature Sitka spruce that has clung to a bluff over an open, cave-like void for decades, its roots bridging empty air where a creek washed t…

Because Olympic National Park protects an unbroken gradient from alpine peaks through rainforest to coastline, wildlife can migrate seasonally across the full range of elevations and habitats without encountering majo…

The Cascadia Subduction Zone offshore produces rare but immense earthquakes, the most recent in January 1700, dated from the tsunami it sent to Japan and corroborated by Indigenous oral histories of the Pacific Northw…

Heavy winter snowpack and glacial ice in the high Olympics act as a natural reservoir, releasing meltwater gradually through the dry summer months. This sustained, cold runoff keeps the peninsula's rivers flowing year…

Here US-101 turns inland from the coast toward the Quinault Valley, entering dense temperate rainforest. As the road moves away from the shore, the canopy thickens and the understory fills with moss and ferns, marking…

The western red cedar holds central cultural importance for the Indigenous peoples of the Olympic coast, who used its rot-resistant wood for canoes, longhouses, and carvings and its fibrous inner bark for clothing, ba…

Old-growth Quinault rainforest is structured in distinct vertical layers, from a shaded, moss-rich understory through a mid-canopy of younger trees to the sunlit crowns of the oldest giants. This multi-storied archite…

The thick canopy moss and epiphyte mats of the Olympic rainforest create soil-like habitat high above the ground, supporting insects, amphibians such as canopy-dwelling salamanders, small mammals, nesting birds, and r…

The Olympic Peninsula supports a substantial black bear population. Bears forage on berries such as huckleberry and salmonberry in late summer and on spawning salmon along the rivers, ranging from the lowland forests…

Where Highway 101 turns inland between the coast and Lake Quinault, it skirts the Queets — one of the park's most remote rainforest valleys, deliberately kept roadless, and the homeland of the Queets people, today par…

The cool, perpetually moist Olympic rainforest is ideal amphibian habitat, home to species including the Pacific giant salamander, one of North America's largest terrestrial salamanders and capable of a barking call,…

In autumn, the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula draw concentrations of feeding wildlife to the spawning fish, with bald eagles, river otters, gulls, and black bears gathering along the banks. For a few weeks the rivers…

The western Olympic valleys contain among the highest biomass of living wood per acre of any forest on Earth, exceeding even many tropical rainforests. The combination of a mild maritime climate and long-lived conifer…

The closing stop of the Olympic tour, on the shore of Lake Quinault. It draws together the park's three worlds — alpine glaciers, temperate rainforest, and wild coast — all shaped by one mountain range wringing rain f…

South Shore Road follows the lower Quinault Valley along the lake's edge, climbing gently into one of the wettest landscapes in the continental United States. The marine air and constant rain support a temperate rainf…

The southwest gateway to Olympic National Park, on the shore of Lake Quinault in the Quinault Rain Forest. The lake and much of this valley belong to the Quinault Indian Nation, separate land from the park itself. The…

Hurricane Ridge Road climbs roughly seventeen miles and nearly a mile in elevation from Port Angeles to the high subalpine country of Hurricane Ridge. The Olympic Mountains are not volcanic; they are uplifted marine r…

The Olympic range is an accretionary wedge: ocean-floor sediment and basalt scraped off the descending Juan de Fuca plate at the Cascadia subduction zone and piled into mountains. The process has continued for tens of…

Hurricane Ridge receives heavy snowfall, often accumulating thirty to forty feet over a winter, and the upper road typically closes seasonally. Plows cut through deep snow to reopen it in spring, and snowbanks can lin…

Pillow basalt forms when lava erupts underwater and cools into rounded, pillow-shaped lobes. Outcrops of it along Hurricane Ridge originated on the deep ocean floor, more than a mile beneath the surface, and were late…

Hurricane Ridge Road is the park's one paved route into the high country — seventeen miles of switchbacks climbing from near sea level to roughly a mile high, where the forest gives way to open alpine sky. In summer i…

Because the Olympic Mountains are built from uplifted marine sediments, fossil-bearing limestone and sandstone occur at high elevations along the range. Hikers can encounter the remains of ancient sea creatures thousa…

As Hurricane Ridge Road gains elevation it passes from dense lowland conifer forest into subalpine terrain, where shorter growing seasons and heavy snowpack produce scattered, wind-shaped trees and open meadows. These…

In summer, Hurricane Ridge's subalpine meadows burst into a brief, intense wildflower bloom of lupine, paintbrush, glacier lilies, and other species. The very short growing season, set by late snowmelt and early cold,…

Hurricane Ridge's open subalpine meadows offer good wildlife viewing in summer, including grazing black-tailed deer and raptors such as hawks and golden eagles that soar on the updrafts along the steep slopes. The exp…

Subalpine meadow soils at Hurricane Ridge are thin and extremely slow to form in the cold, short-season climate, and the vegetation is easily damaged by foot traffic. The park maintains boardwalks and paved trails and…

Hurricane Ridge is named for the powerful winds that batter its exposed, high-elevation spine, where winter gusts can reach hurricane force and heavy snowfall accumulates. At nearly a mile above sea level, weather can…

Hurricane Ridge Road ends at a trailhead near five thousand feet, the highest point reachable by car in this part of Olympic National Park and the start of several backcountry routes including the Hurricane Hill Trail…

A short, easy ridge trail from the Hurricane Ridge area out to the Sunrise Viewpoint — minutes on foot to a sweeping overlook of the glaciated interior Olympics; unforgettable at dawn.

Hurricane Ridge Ski and Snowboard Area: The Hurricane Ridge Ski and Snowboard Area is a small ski area in the northwest United States, located on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. It is within Olympic National Park…

At roughly a mile high, Hurricane Ridge looks out across the roadless, glaciated interior of the Olympic Mountains — ridge after ice-capped ridge reachable only on foot. The day lodge that stood here for some seventy…

Hurricane Hill is a 3.2-mile round-trip trail beginning near 5,000 feet at the end of Hurricane Ridge Road, climbing roughly 700 feet to a 5,757-foot summit. The mostly paved path crosses subalpine wildflower meadows…

A short walk from the Hurricane Ridge parking area opens into the park's prime subalpine meadows. In July and August they erupt with lupine, paintbrush, and glacier lily during an intensely brief alpine growing season…

Madison Falls is the most accessible stop in Olympic National Park: a paved, wheelchair-friendly path of about a hundred yards leads to a roughly fifty-foot cascade off a basalt face near the Elwha River. Benches and…

Rainfall increases with elevation up the Sol Duc Valley, and the forest grows correspondingly lusher and more rainforest-like toward the valley head. Lower stretches near the highway are solid conifer forest, while th…

The Sol Duc Valley contains natural hot springs, where groundwater percolates deep underground, is heated geothermally, and rises to the surface as warm, mineral-rich water. Long used by Indigenous people and later de…

Unlike the glacier-fed Hoh, the Sol Duc River is fed primarily by rainfall and snowmelt, giving it clear, green-tinted water rather than the milky cast of glacial rivers. Its clarity reflects the Quileute name for it,…

The upper Sol Duc valley holds stands of old-growth forest dominated by Douglas-fir and western hemlock, some trees centuries old. Old-growth is defined less by tree size than by structural complexity: standing dead s…

The Sol Duc Hot Springs Road leaves U.S. 101 about thirty miles west of Port Angeles and climbs roughly fourteen miles of old-growth valley to its end. "Sol Duc" is an anglicized Quileute name meaning "sparkling water…

In the early twentieth century, an elaborate hot-springs resort hotel operated at the head of the Sol Duc Valley, drawing visitors seeking the mineral waters. The grand lodge burned in a 1916 fire, but the springs end…

A roughly hundred-foot path about five and a half miles up the Sol Duc Hot Springs Road leads to a wooden viewing platform over a narrow river chute. From late August into October — peak is mid-September through late…

The abundant beard lichens draping Sol Duc Valley trees indicate exceptionally clean air, as many lichen species cannot survive in polluted conditions and serve as natural bioindicators of air quality. The valley's re…

Near its upper end the Sol Duc Road approaches a trailhead serving the area's signature waterfall and a hot-springs resort. The valley narrows and the river steepens and grows louder as it nears the trailhead. This is…

The Sol Duc Road terminates at a trailhead parking area at the head of the valley, the access point for the Sol Duc Falls trail. Beyond the lot the route is foot travel only. The surrounding upper-valley forest is den…

Sol Duc Falls is reached by a 1.6-mile round-trip trail with only about 200 feet of gain, running through the old-growth Sol Duc Valley on level forest path and boardwalks. It passes the historic Canyon Creek Shelter…

The trail to Sol Duc Falls begins at the road's-end trailhead, where the Sol Duc Hot Springs Road dead-ends about fourteen miles up the spur. It runs roughly 1.6 miles round trip — figure forty-five minutes to an hour…

James Island, known to the Quileute as A-Ka-Lat, or top of the rock, is a forested sea island standing just offshore where the Quillayute River meets the Pacific by La Push. Historically a defensive refuge and the tra…

Near La Push, the Sol Duc, Bogachiel, and Calawah rivers join to form the Quillayute River, which empties into the Pacific. This convergence creates a major river mouth and estuary where freshwater meets the sea, supp…

The La Push area offers several distinct beach destinations. Rialto Beach, north of the Quillayute River, is a cobble shore leading to the Hole-in-the-Wall sea arch. South of the river, forest trails lead to First, Se…

The Quileute are a canoe-going people with a long maritime tradition of fishing and hunting on the open Pacific from cedar dugout canoes. This seafaring heritage continues today, including participation in intertribal…

The waters off La Push host abundant marine mammals, including harbor seals, Steller and California sea lions, and sea otters. Sea otters, once hunted to local extinction for the fur trade, have been reintroduced and…

As the road nears the ocean at La Push, the forest thins and the maritime environment becomes unmistakable: flat, bright coastal light, cold salt-and-kelp air, and the constant roar of Pacific surf. These sensory cues…

The La Push corridor terminates near Olympic's coastal trailheads, where the forest gives way to the open Pacific. Wild beaches here feature heaped driftwood, offshore sea stacks, and abundant wildlife including bald…

The Second Beach trail is a 1.4-mile round-trip walk through coastal old-growth forest of ferns and salal, descending roughly 200 feet to the shore over large driftwood logs. The beach opens to offshore sea stacks kno…

A forest trail of about three-quarters of a mile drops through spruce to Second Beach, a wild Pacific cove of sea stacks, tide pools, and storm-piled drift logs at La Push, on the Quileute Reservation. This is dangero…

The Upper Hoh Road leaves Highway 101 and runs roughly seventeen miles upstream along the Hoh River into Olympic's western rainforest. The west-facing slopes here receive about two hundred inches of precipitation annu…

The Hoh River braids and frequently shifts its channel across a broad gravel floodplain, driven by the heavy sediment load it carries from the glaciated high country. Floods regularly rework the riverbed, and the fast…

The Hoh Valley's broad, flat-bottomed, U-shaped profile was carved by glaciers during the last ice age, when ice thousands of feet thick filled the valley. The river later occupied the trench left behind, giving the v…

The Upper Hoh Road runs about eighteen miles east off Highway 101, south of Forks, climbing the Hoh River valley to one of the world's premier temperate rainforests. The valley and river carry the name of the Hoh Trib…

The Hoh Rain Forest is renowned for its natural quiet; a spot deep in the valley has been promoted as one of the quietest places in the United States, with long intervals free of human-made noise. The dense, moss-lade…

The Hoh's forest floor is densely carpeted with sword ferns and oxalis (wood sorrel), plants adapted to the very low light beneath the closed old-growth canopy. Some, like oxalis, can fold their leaves to avoid damage…

The Hoh Valley grows Sitka spruce to exceptional size, with the largest specimens exceeding two hundred and fifty feet tall and several feet in trunk diameter. The species thrives in the valley's mild, fog-rich, high-…

In autumn, bull Roosevelt elk in the Hoh Valley bugle, producing a far-carrying, high-pitched call that drops into grunts as they compete for mates during the rut. The river-bottom meadows are prime habitat, and dawn…

Bigleaf maples in the Hoh become draped in heavy mantles of club moss and ferns, forming hanging gardens on their limbs. Some maples grow adventitious roots from their branches to absorb moisture and nutrients from th…

The Hoh Rain Forest is known for its birdsong, notably the Pacific wren, a tiny bird with a remarkably long, intricate cascading song, and the varied thrush, whose single sustained, ringing note is often called the vo…

Near the road's end, the Hoh transitions into dense, towering old-growth, with conifers wider than a vehicle and a canopy that dims the forest floor. This is among the largest remaining stretches of intact temperate r…

The Upper Hoh Road ends at the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center, the trailhead for two easy loops: the Hall of Mosses, under a mile to a moss-draped bigleaf maple archway, and the Spruce Nature Trail, just over a mile o…

The Hoh bottomlands are among the best places in the park to spot Roosevelt elk, the largest elk in North America — bulls can approach a thousand pounds. The herds here are part of the largest wild population left on…

The Hall of Mosses is an easy 0.8-mile loop from the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center, climbing about 80 feet onto the trail. It winds beneath bigleaf maples heavily draped in club moss, passes a spur into a moss-covere…

The Hoh Rain Forest is one of the finest temperate rainforests on Earth, the tour's tentpole, and the heart of country that carries the Hoh people's name. The Hall of Mosses is an easy loop under a mile through biglea…

The Quinault Valley is remarkable for the dense concentration of record-size trees within a few miles of one another — an unusual number of national champions, the single largest documented individual of their species…

Built in nineteen twenty-six on the south shore of Lake Quinault, this grand timber lodge anchors the Quinault Rain Forest. President Franklin Roosevelt lunched here on October first, nineteen thirty-seven, weighing w…

Lake Quinault is the principal home of the Quinault blueback, a distinct run of sockeye salmon found essentially only in this watershed. The fish ascends the Quinault River from the Pacific to spawn, and has been a co…

A short, flat 0.3-mile round-trip gravel path off South Shore Road in the Quinault rainforest leads to the World's Largest Sitka Spruce. Roughly 1,000 years old, the tree stands about 191 feet tall and measures close…

A short, flat walk off South Shore Road leads to the tree recognized as the world's largest Sitka spruce: roughly one hundred ninety-one feet tall, nearly fifty-nine feet around, and close to a thousand years old. It…

In the saturated Quinault rainforest, plant life colonizes virtually every available surface: moss blankets rocks, logs, and structures, while ferns and other plants grow directly from tree trunks and atop fallen wood…

A roadside cascade about forty feet tall, slipping down a moss-and-fern wall a few miles up South Shore Road past the lodge. One of the falls featured in the viral 'Olympic Peninsula waterfall road trip,' it's the eas…