Olympic Mountains Trail Guide. Robert Wood
Five years later, after much debate, Congress created Olympic National Park. Included in its 648,000 acres was the core of the Olympic Mountains, consisting of the higher and more rugged peaks. Additions made in subsequent years, including the ocean beaches in 1953, increased the park’s size to almost 900,000 acres. The main area of the park is bordered on the north, east, and south by the Olympic National Forest, with stateowned lands lying adjacent to the park’s western border. Generally speaking, the national forest and state lands are more heavily forested than the park, because much of the latter consists of high-altitude forest, meadowland, and barren peaks and ridges. Excluding the ocean beaches, the park as it exists today extends roughly 40 miles in each direction—north to south and east to west—with most of the area still in its natural state. Because commercial activities are barred, the park is a wilderness providing homes to a large variety of wildlife.
In 1984 five wilderness areas, totaling 92,966 acres, were created in the Olympic National Forest. They adjoin the national park on the east and south. All but one are located in the eastern Olympics, the rugged peaks and ridges visible from Puget Sound. Fifty years ago these areas were slated for inclusion in the national park, but this was never done because the allotted acreage was used instead to add to the park the ocean beaches and a river corridor.
The United States Congress designated the Daniel J. Evans Wilderness in 1988 and it now has a total of 876,447 acres.
All of this wilderness is located in and is managed by the National Park Service. The Daniel J. Evans Wilderness is bordered by the Buckhorn Wilderness to the northeast, the Brothers Wilderness to the east, the Mount Skokmish Wilderness to the southeast, the Wonder Mountains Wilderness to the south, and the Colonel Bob Wilderness to the south and east. The Daniel J. Evans Wilderness also contains 48 miles of wilderness coast with its beaches, rugged headlands, tide pools, seastacks, and coastal rainforests.
ROADS AND CAMPGROUNDS
During the early days of settlement in the Pacific Northwest, the Olympic Mountains had few visitors because they were virtually inaccessible due to lack of trails and roads. Today, however, one can reach the Olympics with comparative ease. Although still wild, the region is no longer unknown. The Olympic Highway, US 101, together with the highway connecting Grays Harbor with Puget Sound, encircles the Olympics. Numerous spur roads extend inward into the mountains from the encircling highways like the broken spokes of a wheel. Most of the roads follow river valleys and end at low elevations, but several climb the ridges to the high country. Although some of the roads are paved, most of these secondary routes are graveled two-lane tracks, at times so narrow as to require turnouts for vehicles to pass each other. Forest Service roads are identified throughout by the abbreviation FS.
Olympic National Park is essentially a wilderness crisscrossed by trails, with roads penetrating only short distances. Although the park is unmarred by a network of highways, the spur roads permit automobile travelers to see representative portions of its major features. The west-side roads provide access to the rain forests, where deer and elk are often observed. On the northern side the roads to Hurricane Ridge and Deer Park climb above 5000 feet, and travelers see a succession of snowfields and meadows, as well as the higher peaks.
At various times a proposal has been made to build a highway across the Olympics, but this would destroy the park’s wilderness character, which is its greatest asset. Moreover, the park’s unique features—the rain forests, the elk herds, the mountain-and-sea vistas—are already accessible to motorists.
The park exhibits, more by accident than design, a natural zoning. The primitive core, a true wilderness without trails, is surrounded by two concentric belts. The inner, broader belt contains the bulk of the trail system; the outer band is penetrated by both roads and trails.
Because the Olympic National Forest borders the national park on three sides, it forms, with state lands on the west, still another band in the concentric arrangement. Until recent years the national forest and state lands were, like the national park, almost roadless. Today, however, they are cut up by hundreds of miles of logging roads, and the road pattern is constantly changing. Consequently, such wilderness as remains in the national forest is primarily found in the high country that borders the national park on the east.
Both the National Park Service and the Forest Service maintain public campgrounds along the major roads. These have individual camping units with cooking facilities and picnic tables, but not all of them are equipped with piped water and comfort stations with flush toilets. The developed sites usually charge a fee for staying overnight.
Hikers who elect to begin or end their backpacking trips by staying in automobile campgrounds should not expect them to be as quiet and peaceful as they were decades ago. Today the campgrounds are inclined to be noisy, but perhaps this is merely a reflection of the present age. Usually, however, the campground stay is an enjoyable one, albeit not a wilderness experience— because dogs bark, children cry and shriek, radios blare, and motor vehicles break the stillness. The best locations are invariably selected by those who arrive early; thus riverside camps are usually occupied. Here, despite the noise and the cawing of crows before dawn, one can sleep well, lulled into dreamland by the mesmeric sound of the river.
THE TRAIL SYSTEM
At the present time, the Olympics have nearly 900 miles of trails, of which approximately 66 percent are in the national park. In times past, several paths within the park received such infrequent maintenance (or none at all) that they acquired the status of abandoned trails. Recently, though, park officials have adopted a policy that ensures some degree of maintenance for every trail within park boundaries. The bulk of the trails in this 600-mile network are in reasonably good shape, however, and receive some maintenance—although not as much as might be desirable because of cuts in the National Park Service’s budget.
The network of usable trails—approximately 85 percent of the total mileage—is heavily used by backpackers and equestrians. Beginning at various points on the spur roads, the paths follow the valleys through virgin forests, climb the foothills and ridges, then traverse high meadowlands to the barren rock, snow, and ice of the higher peaks and ridges. Although many routes are steep, the trails are safe, and healthy persons should experience no difficulty. Most trails have moderate grades, but they are narrow, usually no more than 2 feet across.
Trees in old-growth forests on the drier, northeastern side of the Olympic range are smaller than those on the southwestern side.
How did this trail system originate? Obviously, it has not always existed, but it is probable that most of today’s backpackers do not understand or appreciate the difficulties the pioneer explorers faced a hundred years ago, when game trails were the only routes in the Olympics. The first trails were the paths made by elk and deer during their wanderings, and most of them have been worn deep through centuries of use. They form a complex network which may still be in the process of creation. Usually they are best developed in rough terrain, where they collect together to follow one route—often the only possible way. However, where the landscape becomes more gentle, game paths tend to branch out and lose their continuity. This explains the “disappearing elk trail” so prevalent in the Olympics.
The first trails that resulted from human activity might be considered the equivalent of game trails. The paths were not built; they were tramped out, either by American Indians hunting in the foothills or by Western Europeans hunting and prospecting. The first trails built intentionally were the ones made by expeditions during the late nineteenth century. When reconnoitering the country, the explorers quickly discovered that every river bottom had game trails and that such routes were the best ones to travel. Accordingly, they improved and combined them with bits of trail they made themselves.
Most of the trails in the Olympics were constructed by the Forest Service when it had jurisdiction not only of the present national forest but also of what is now Olympic National Park. When the Forest Service built the trails, it followed the example set by the explorers and utilized elk trails whenever possible, linking them together for