Olympic Mountains Trail Guide. Robert Wood
participated in twenty-seven climbers’ expeditions to Mount Olympus, during which I ascended West Peak, its highest pinnacle, sixteen times. On several of these climbs I camped overnight on the summit of Five Fingers Peak (West Peak’s slightly lower companion), and as far as I am concerned this experience was the ne plus ultra of my Olympic adventures.
Only in this way, I felt, could I really get to know the Olympics, and when writing about them capture the essence and feel of the country. I have attempted to include all the trails, both in the national park and the national forest, but I am not so naïve as to contend that I have described every footpath created by humans. Not long after the first edition appeared, a young man who prided himself on his knowledge of the high Olympics wailed in heartbroken dismay: “Why, you don’t even have the PJ Lake Trail in your book!” If I have overlooked others, I have not been made aware of them, and they would necessarily have to be either seldom-used way paths or perhaps fragments of long-abandoned trails that have vanished. Nearly all trails of consequence have been included in this book.
I have not, of course, walked every trail during all four seasons of the year; the descriptions therefore depict the country traversed as I observed it during particular seasons in certain years. But conditions vary from year to year, and from one season to another. Hikers are thus likely to note change, because it is inevitable and constant. Few things, if any, are truly permanent. Man-made features such as bridges, paths, and shelters can be destroyed virtually overnight by a fierce storm or more slowly by the insidious processes of erosion. The reader should therefore keep in mind that the text of this book reflects the conditions as they appeared when the writer or his trail checkers were personally on the scene observing the country. But to adopt an old phrase, the bridge that is here today may be gone tomorrow, and visitors to the wilderness should come prepared for change.
During the half-century that has swept by since I began seeking the solitude of the Olympics, considerable change has occurred in other aspects of the wilderness experience. In the good old days fifty years ago, regulations were few, gasoline inexpensive, and backcountry permits, although required, were seldom checked by the rangers. One could camp just about anywhere he or she wished, and fires could be built in any established campsite. One could also drink the water straight from the mountain streams without fear that it might be polluted and cause illness.
Some time along about the mid-1970s, the size of overnight parties going into the Olympics was limited, both by the National Park Service and the US Forest Service, to a dozen persons. Fires were forbidden in most subalpine areas, and a reservation system was adopted for popular areas in an attempt to give everyone an equal opportunity to enjoy this wilderness. The ban on fires was instituted chiefly to save the picturesque “ghost forests” left by natural fires—forests that were becoming increasingly depleted because campers chopped them down for firewood.
When I wrote what became the first edition of Olympic Mountains Trail Guide, I included detailed descriptions of several trails or parts of trails that had been abandoned by the National Park Service and the Forest Service and were no longer maintained. I included them not only to preserve their historical value but also with the hope that putting them in the guidebook would encourage the government agencies involved to reopen these once-excellent trails. Unfortunately, it did not—perhaps not because of disinterest by the agencies but due to limited funds budgeted for trail maintenance and restoration. Be that as it may, abandoning these trails and not showing them on current maps (and letting nature return them to the wild) makes the areas traversed by such trails essentially inaccessible—and thus presents a good argument for deleting these lands from either the national park or the Forest Service’s wilderness areas and again making them available to logging or other commercial activities. If they cannot be visited due to the absence of reasonably maintained trails, why retain these lands in a national park or wilderness area?
By describing all the trails in the Olympic Mountains, it is my hope this guidebook will help disperse visitors and lessen the natural tendency for hikers to congregate on the well-known, popular routes. Many trails that are obscure and seldom used have just as much to offer as do those that are tramped regularly.
It is also my hope that this book will help preserve the Olympic wilderness for hikers and backpackers—not just for the present generation but for future ones as well. I once heard a government official say, with regard to older people who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, or thought they couldn’t hike or backpack anymore: “These people come to us and tell us they are glad we are building logging roads into the backcountry because the roads make it possible for them to visit again the places they hiked to when they were young.” He made the statement to bolster his argument for road building into the remote corners of the wilderness, but of course he was placing a premium on one generation, with little regard for the young men and women of the future. So, too, were the former hikers who expressed their thanks to him for building the roads.
The Olympic Mountains are not as wild today as they were during the pioneer years of settlement in the Pacific Northwest or, for that matter, as they were fifty years ago. Nevertheless, they constitute one of the finest primitive regions remaining in the United States. Most of the area enclosed within the Olympic National Park, plus part of the adjoining national forest, can be accurately defined as wilderness. Thus, when hikers shoulder their packs and start up the trail, the magic of the wild closes around them, invoking its spell of magnetic enchantment.
—Robert L. Wood, 2000
The Flapjack Lakes Trail (Hike 132)
INTRODUCTION
The Olympic Peninsula is located on the western coast of North America, approximately midway between the North Pole and the Equator, and marks the southern end of a fiorded coastline extending southeasterly from Cook Inlet, Alaska. The peninsula forms the northwestern corner of the conterminous United States and is bordered by saltwater on three sides—by the Pacific Ocean on the west, Puget Sound to the east, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the north. Only on the south is it connected to the mainland.
About half of the peninsula’s 6500 square miles is occupied by the Olympic Mountains. They dominate the interior and are surrounded by lowlands that seldom rise more than 500 feet above sea level. The point where the mountains begin is not a distinct line because they blend gradually into the lowlands.
Once covered with vast stands of virgin forest, the country surrounding the mountains has been greatly altered since the arrival of Europeans in the latter part of the eighteenth century. As a consequence of the Europeans’ impact, the area still in its natural state has been reduced to about fifty percent of what it was prior to the coming of Europeans to the Pacific Northwest.
Although the peninsula is located at a fairly high latitude, the nearby Pacific Ocean gives the land a mild marine climate. Extreme temperatures are unknown and precipitation is heavy, particularly on the windward side which faces the ocean. Here the rainfall often exceeds 140 inches a year, with still greater amounts deposited as snow at the higher elevations during the winter and spring. The summer and fall months are comparatively dry. The annual precipitation dwindles to about 20 inches in the northwest corner of the mountains’ leeward side, where the slopes stand as a barrier to storms that move inland from the sea.
THE OLYMPIC MOUNTAINS
Because they comprise a complex cluster of ridges, canyons, and peaks, the Olympic Mountains cannot be called a range in the normal sense. This cluster is somewhat steeper on the north and east than it is on the south and west. Although the terrain is rugged and precipitous, it is not lofty as mountains go, rising less than 8000 feet above the bordering seas. This fact can be misleading, however, because the Olympics stand almost as high above the Pacific Ocean as do the Rocky Mountains above the Great Plains.
This dome-like cluster does not have a central divide, but a number of ridges and so-called ranges separate the