When I went up to Seattle in September of ’07 for Grant’s wedding, I took the opportunity to get in a little bit of hiking. Not, alas, as much as I would have liked, but there was definitely some outdoors I got to see which I enjoyed a great deal.
Anyway, on Sunday, September 23, 2007, Amittai, Zoz, and I headed on out to Olympic NP, via car and ferry, and headed on up to Hurricane Ridge. Zoz wasn’t able to stay the full time, but Amittai and I did a walk that my GPS tells me was 5.8 miles, but I think it’s lying. Oh, several hundred feet of gain, but nothing ridiculous. Anyway.
trail along the ridge; view of olympics
Anyway, Amittai and I left his place in the morning and drove onto the ferry, where we met up with Zoz (after some fun wondering whether or not he would have made it), and once having arrived at the Olympic Peninsula, we headed our merry way over to Port Angeles, where we turned towards the park (so we were coming in from the northern entrance, obviously). We drive from the park entrance up to the Hurricane Ridge visitor center, from which there is a lovely view of the Olympic Mountains, and several trailheads, which was good.
The three of us then wound along this ridgeline above the road on which we had driven up. We ran into some trailbuilders who were out working for the day, which was kind of neat to see. As much as I enjoy hiking, I’ve never really seen anyone doing any real trail work. We went on out to the spur end of this trail that they were working on, and had a nice long look north into Canada over the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Craziness. Shortly after this point, Zoz had to peel off to make sure to make his return flight, and Amittai continued on for a while.
We turned off of the main obvious trail , and went down a bit behind the hill from where we had started, and continued over along the ridgeline. We got to a trail junction, picked a random direction, and then ended up turning up a use trail we could see going up the slope just above us. We ended up going up a fairly steep slope, but getting some nice views and being surrounded by some lovely hillside. As the afternoon was moving on, we decided to turn around and retrace our steps. Alas.
However, as the fog was rolling in as we went back , this probably turned out to be a reasonably good idea. We ran into a couple of people who were heading out, and they were leaving little pieces of paper under various rocks to make sure they didn’t get lost. Or something. They asked us not to pick them up as trash if we saw them. A little dubious, we encouraged them to not be too long about it, but ah well. People, don’t go out when you’re a mile from a trailhead and you need to leave yourself little notes to find your route. What is there to enjoy when you can’t see a damn thing anyway?
Anyhoo, we made it back, safe and well, and had a reasonable drive back to Seattle, though we had to wait a while for the ferry. Though it gave us enough time to go get a drink. Fun!
