Tag Archives: Olympic National Park

Marymere Falls Located near Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park, the short hike to Marymere Falls offers a delightful walk through a verdant rainforest. Along the way, the trail passes through a botanist’s dream: a garden of mosses and ferns beneath a majestic canopy of ancient trees. Viewpoints afford views of the rambunctious falls from above and below. Choose both. …

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 …

After three years of avoiding COVID, it finally caught me. I got a Paxlovid prescription and went backpacking on the Olympic coast to battle the COVID demons at the ocean’s edge. Was it my fevered brain, or was the shoreline at Cedar Creek with its wave-sculpted sea stacks surreal? Did I actually see multiple orca pods hunting on two different days, …

The Olympic Coast is a sublime strip of wilderness beach that stretches for 60 miles, from the mouth of the Hoh River in the south to the legendary Shi-Shi Beach in the north. It is widely acknowledged to offer some of the best ocean-front hiking on Planet Earth, including three glorious point-to-point traverses that are, each in their own way, …

We expect judges to be impartial, to render calm decisions free of emotional baggage, but judges are human. There will always be some influence from their own experiences and personal outlook. Usually, they strive to limit that influence and render unbiased decisions. Their success in that exercise is as variable as the people who wear the robe.  William O. Douglas …

It has been five years since my thru-hike on the Pacific Northwest Trail  and I’m still trying to figure out how to talk about it. People say things like, “wow, that must have been fun” or “I wish I had time to do that.” They look confused when I can’t give them a simple explanation of what it was like. …

Some sophisticated folks that I know visit Paris every year. Some enjoy a yearly trek in Nepal. I find myself returning to a much-loved locale over and over too.  The lingua franca of my favored destination is the rhythmic unspooling of the ceaseless surf. I return to Shi-Shi Beach. How many times? I’ve lost count. Will I go again? Absolutely. …

After decades of debate, draft plans, and environmental assessments, the National Park Service (NPS) has decided to eliminate mountain goats from the Olympic National Park and the surrounding National Forest areas. They plan to employ their Record of Decision, Alternative D: a combination of relocation and lethal removal. This means relocating at least 50% of the Olympic area mountain goats …

Where can cyclists encounter old growth forest, mountain vistas, rolling farmland, serene lakes, flowing rivers and ocean beaches, and even catch a glimpse of our Canadian neighbors to the north, all within a 130-mile radius? Nowhere but on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula! The Olympic Discovery Trail (ODT) traverses this most scenic region of the state from historic Port Townsend on the …

Here in the Pacific Northwest we are fortunate to have some of the nation’s most beautiful National Parks. They are all popular – and busy – in summer but the winter season offers its own unique pleasures. If you are looking for a great outdoor experience in the Pacific Northwest, consider snowshoeing through the silent, pristine landscapes of one of …