Tag Archives: Dosewallips

The Olympic Peninsula has the best place names of anywhere I’ve lived. Humptulips. Hamma Hamma. Wynoochee. Duckabush. My favorite – Dosewallips. At the end of autumn, when a window of clear weather opened, I traveled on a road alongside the Dosewallips River. Several years ago, a storm-swollen flow pulverized a stretch of pavement, closing the route to motorized vehicles. After …

I quoted Tennyson, “My mariners…you and I are old,” when I proposed the Olympic Crossing to my friends. Quoting Tennyson was standard for me, but proposing a mere hike was not. We were climbers. For thirty years, every wilderness trip we’d taken had set a mountain summit as its goal. But I’d capped last summer’s climbing season with my fourth …