Big Creek loop

"The scouts sent out to prospect for the trail met with no very encouraging success, and the necessity of forcing our way through the dense forest and over precipitous bluffs dawned on us and placed us all in no very sanguine mood; and to add to the discouragement, an incessant downpour of rain had followed us from the time we left the Lilliwaup."

Lt. Joseph O'Neil
1890 Olympic Expedition

Unlike Lt. O'Neil, we are enjoying a blue-sky day in the Olympics today. A family hike on the Big Creek Loop, near Lake Cushman. It's a short 5-miler, about right for my son's attention span, and mine too.

We turn off 101 at Hoodsport and before long we are standing at the trailhead. The trail starts and ends at the Big Creek Campground, which is still closed for the season. The trail gains almost 1000 feet in less than 2 miles, so I know there will be some stout uphill stretches along the way. There have been several strong wind storms out here this winter and I expect we'll see some signs of their passing. Once we're geared up and have the boy wrestled into the backpack, we are on the trail.

Not far from here is where Lt. O'Neil's party entered the mountains back in 1890. Their goal was to produce an accurate survey of the Olympic Mountains and the river valleys that ran to the sea, as well as to construct a cross-peninsula trail that would connect towns like Hoodsport and Union City with Gray's Harbor and Hoquiam. Their story, as told in the Robert Wood book Men, Mules and Mountains, is a tale of real exploration and raw discovery, men traveling through country that they know has never been seen by human eyes.

We climb and climb, then climb some more. The first part of the trail runs high above the waters of the creek, and I have trouble hearing the babbling of the brook at all. Near the cutoff for Mount Ellinor, we descend to the confluence of Big Creek and Branch Creek, and have lunch on a boulder planted in mid-stream near a small falls. Below our perch is a deep hole in the creek, where the bottom just drops away. I don't know if there are trout in these waters but if there are, I'll bet there's one in there. Micah and I sit on a wooden bridge and throw pebbles into the tumbling water.

We can see damage from the wind storms everywhere. Trees choke portions of the creeks and in one spot, the place that the trail guide described as "a good bridge above a gorgeous cascade," the creek's bank has been sliced away and a temporary trail built well above the route of the one that used to be here. Assorted trees lie across one another in the stream bed, like a logging accident.

The green under layer of the forest is dotted with the beautiful white flowers of trillium. Trees are in bud, a few weeks shy of full leaf. On the musty damp of rotting logs, colonies of bear's bread and turkey tail adorn the shadowy surfaces. This is a rainforest, after all, even if our weather is better, at present, than O'Neil's.

The descent is mellow and pleasant, bits of sunlight bouncing through the canopy, that seem to catch us unawares. Other than a partially-screened view of Mount Washington at one point on the way up, however, there have been no grand vistas on this hike. I am not complaining, not exactly, but if I have to do that much climbing, I'd like it to come with a view. Which is a lot like O'Neil's men felt about the place as well.

We have it easy these days though. Where the O'Neil party felt blessed if they happened across a game trail here and there, this and other Olympic trails of today are well made and easy to follow. The mountains and the terrain are the same though, even after all these years. Any hike through these parts is a glimpse of history, a new insight into what is unique and valuable about the Olympics.

We finish and drive off, with an understanding that we have shared a day with history and contributed a little of our own story to this part of the peninsula.

The Hoh River

The Hoh River begins 8,000 feet above sea level, on Mt. Olympus.

It travels 56 miles from its source to the sea. Through alpine highlands, steep canyons and rich, braided bottom lands.

Northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet, and bald eagle nest in snags along the Hoh and in the surrounding watershed.

Over 140 inches of rain a year feeds the river and its tributaries. The ancient forests that thrive inside the National Park represent one of the planet’s last intact temperate rainforests.

Deer, Roosevelt elk, black bear, cougar, fox, and other mammals roam the deep green shadows below towering fir, cedar and spruce.

Salmon spawn in the Hoh’s clean gravel, each fish completing a journey that lasted years, before returning to the place it began.

There are a quarter-million rivers in the lower 48, but there aren't many that remain intact. By "intact," I mean that there aren't many that flow from start to end, from snowmelt to brine, without being redirected and reclaimed in some dang-fool, money-grabbing, politically motivated scheme along the way.

All rivers used to be like this one. Before the dams. Before the levees and channeling projects had their way. Back when nature - trees, mountains and rivers, especially - was still seen as inexhaustible. Unassailable.

The Hoh is a link to this past, and one of the last great American rivers.

Daydreams

Wave-sculpted Bedrock

Jim Quattrocchi

Port Angeles, WA

Everybody daydreams.

I daydream about places I still want to go, trips I want to take. It's a very big world, despite rumors to the contrary, and I grow fonder of it with each passing day. I think about the sights I have yet to see and I imagine how certain scenes will be set. Sunrise on a cold, high mountain. Deep green light, filtered through a canopy of ancient trees that were old when Leif Ericksen was a child. It's my planet, and I am in love with it.

About 15 years ago, in a salmonid ecology class at The Evergreen State College, I was daydreaming about traveling the length of the Hoh river, from the top of Mount Olympus to the sandy shore of the Pacific. I wanted to follow a river from its source to its terminus... it's a parallel to life, isn't it? It sure seemed that way to me. Summit to the Sea was what I figured I'd call the trip, and I was instantly possessed with the idea. I imagined the stories I'd collect on the hike in, the climb to the summit, and then the hike and canoe trip back out again.

I never attempted it, but I still daydream about that trip. For so many reasons. The Hoh is one of the most extensive watersheds in Washington, never mind the Olympics. It is unique, complicated. I have climbed Olympus a couple times before and I had thought about shortening the time needed (it's a long hike in up the river to Olympus), by doing the same trip but on a different river. The Duckabush, for example, would take less than half the time to complete.

I saw a blurb in the paper today that has me scurrying back to my original plan, to make this trip happen on the Hoh. There's a book called Fast Moving Water that is being released, a set of photos of the Hoh in all its various stages. The Hoh River Trust is sponsoring a book release party at the Burke Museum in Seattle on May 8th. I will be going to that, I hope.

The Hoh is one of the last river systems of its size in the United States that still runs unhindered from its source to the sea. To follow it along its way, to be able to feel what the river feels as it falls, to smell the cool mountain air rushing up the valley, or the pungent scents of the tidal ranges, to watch the salmon struggle along the shallows and to see the black bear move without any hesitation, through deep mountain pools … all these and more convince me that I need to make it the Hoh. And to make it soon.

It's exciting already, and I haven't done anything yet.

Getting reaquainted

Three months ago this week, I left on what was to have been the first winter sea kayak circumnavigation of Vancouver Island. I got about three weeks into the trip when a torn rotator cuff stopped me cold in Johnstone Strait. Mary and Micah made the drive up to Sayward to pick me up and I came back home, Back to work, back to the gray cold of a Tacoma winter.

I couldn't kayak when I got back; the shoulder needed time to heal. As of this writing, it's still in the healing process, still not 100 percent. Over the past dozen years or so, I've been kayaking constantly. It was a rare week that I didn't get on the water at least three or four times, usually more, and now here I was with an injury that would keep me out of a kayak for the next few months. I had some choices to make, as far as what I would do next. What eventually came out of the situation became the beginnings of this blog, and a renewed commitment to exploring the Olympic Peninsula.

When I first got to Washington, I was a new Air Force recruit, flying for a living. I traveled around the world as an aircraft loadmaster, and during the one week a month that I got back home, I would hightail it out to the Olympics, hiking and climbing. Sometimes with a friend, usually alone. I climbed Olympus a couple times, Mount Constance and Mount Jefferson, hiked Anderson Pass and the Enchanted Valley trail. I spent a 4th of July alone in Royal Basin, casting for trout in the lake, watching the goats pass through my camp, climbing in the day and cooking pasta and pan-fried fish in the evening.

At some point, I started working in the outdoor industry. That's what they call it, the "outdoor industry." As with any career, the longer you do it, the more specialized you become. I chose sea kayaks as my specialty because I love the freedom and choices that kayaking represents to me. The down side is that, because I spent my time paddling, I no longer allowed myself the opportunity to climb. Or backpack, canoe, snowshoe or ski. I identified myself as a kayaker and this eventually came to mean that kayaking was all that I did. A simple self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will.

I taught hundreds of classes. I led hundreds of tours. From a few hours in length to days, then weeks. I kayaked around Newfoundland during the summer of 2000, three months of daily paddling, nights spent in a tent and days on the wild north Atlantic. (Not always wild, but wilder than most.) I kayaked in BC, in Mexico and the Santa Barbara Channel Islands. The idea for paddling around Vancouver Island in winter was another in the long string of kayaking trips; the unforeseen benefit of my shoulder injury has been that I have begun to rediscover the things I used to do, because I now have the time.

Not only am I canoeing again, and hiking, and planning a few climbing trips this summer, I'm also getting reacquainted with the Olympic Peninsula. I don't know if it's true for everyone - maybe it's just a product of getting older - but I really feel the need to know the place, and only time spent will do. I knew, from the very first days I was in Washington, that there was something special about the Olympics, that they are unlike other places, and that I felt drawn to the peninsula in ways I still can't explain. After so much time spent traveling the world, I have a need to develop that sense of place that comes from knowing one part of the planet from many different angles.

I still feel torn about the Vancouver Island trip. There is a part of me that wants to go back, to finish the job. I haven't made up my mind yet as to whether I'll go back, but I could see it coming up again.

What is really driving my imagination at this point, however, is knowing that every trip I take in the Olympics is getting me more familiar with the place. I don't know what will come from this pursuit, but at the very least, it will allow me to gain an understanding of the peninsula that only comes from repetition.

It doesn't mean that I'm through with kayaking. Far from it. I am still teaching classes and I have a few tours lined up for this summer and fall, so I'll still be spending a big chunk of my time on the water. It just won't be the only thing that I do anymore.

Humes Ranch

"We had long since learned that there were no snakes in these mountains, nor along the streams, hence we used the last of our antidote at this point and looked upon the dead soldier with sorrow and regret."

Harry Fisher
O'Neil Olympic expedition, 1890

I think it's kind of funny, the euphemisms we use for booze. The O'Neil expeditions of the early 1890's took along bottles of whiskey that they referred to as "snake-bite antidote," although they were not, in truth, expecting to see any snakes. Somehow the antidote still managed to escape the cork and evaporate, yet the men survived in relative safety.

Fisher (which was not the man's real name – there's a fascinating story here, which I'll save for another time), was wrong, however. There are snakes in the Olympics. I know because my path crossed one just a few minutes ago. A skinny fellow, a foot or so in length, slithering through the duff of the trail. Dark green in color, almost black, with a single thin, red stripe running down the length of his back. The Northwestern Garter Snake (Thamnophis ordinoides), is actually quite common in these parts. I think about picking him up, subjecting him to a closer examination, but the river is close and the snake and I both have other places to go before nightfall.

I stole a few hours away from the Port Angeles Sea Kayak Symposium and hied myself off to the mountains instead. Away from salt water for the afternoon, to hike the loop trail to the Humes Ranch on the upper reaches of the Elwha River. It's a popular trail, especially on a sunny Saturday, and there are several large parties on their way out as I hike in.

During the 1889-1890 Press Party Expedition, the first successful crossing of the Olympic Peninsula, expedition member James Christie predicted that this part of the Elwha valley would make "a young paradise for some venturesome squatter." Ten years later, venturesome squatters Will and Grant Humes homesteaded the valley and their cabins still stand among rolling meadows on the flanks of the mountain, several hundred feet above the tumbling power of the Elwha.

From the Whiskey Bend trailhead, it's a 5-mile loop to Humes Ranch. I look at my feet as I hike the well-traveled path, the dirt and mud holding images of the feet that came before me. The prints of other boots, the hoof marks of pack horses. I raise my eyes to the hills off across the river, snow-tipped peaks atop seas of green.

It is all green here. The understory of salal and vine maple, huckleberries and fiddleheads, is awash in impossible shades of green. April in the alpine country is a celebration of life and a promise that winter, although it is sure to return, is gone for a while, at least.

I come to Michael's cabin first. It has been restored by park personnel but it stands as it did a hundred years ago in an opening in the forest canopy. A stream cuts through the property, winding and burbling its way down as it descends to the river far below. The pasture has been overtaken by alder now, and what used to be a clear meadow is slowly being reclaimed by the forest. Remnants of a garden remain and I've heard you can still find mint and herbs that were planted by the first settlers, but I continue on down the hill toward Humes Ranch.

The Humes cabin is slightly larger than the first, but it is still a rough-hewn building with few appointments. There used to be a barn here as well, but it's been gone since the 1930's. Rolling west from the ranch house, open meadows provide a contrast to the surrounding evergreens, and water seems to be everywhere. Rivulets and streams bisect the meadow at several different points, and there is no escaping the sound of the river below.

It's a short hike down to the Elwha and in a matter of minutes, I am next to the rushing water. Huge trees are scattered like sticks around the flood plain, evidence of what the river can do when she is angry. The wind follows the valley, rising up off the water in that way that mountain winds are prone to do, a refreshing breeze, filled with the smells of new life. I take a few photos as I sit on the riverbank, but mostly I just look around in new amazement and appreciation of the size of it all.

Everyone should come here. We all need to get out to a place like this one as often as we can. In a world where we are usually the biggest concern, a world that revolves around self and our personal needs, it is easy to lose sight of the larger truths. It is good to get away to a big land like this one, filled with history and bright scenery. We need to see how big it all is. To regain perspective.

Port Angeles Sea Kayak Symposium

I'm writing this from my room at the Red Lion Inn here in Port Angeles, ice clinking in my glass, as the evening falls. I love that it's almost 8pm and the sky is still light, the glow on the water so warm. This is, without doubt, a singularly beautiful time of the season.

I am giving a few presentations again this year at the Port Angeles Sea Kayak Symposium... I think it's the fifth year I've been coming to this event. Maybe the sixth. I like it and I like coming here for so many reasons: It gets me out on the peninsula, to one of my favorite towns. There's something about the gritty elegance of PA that has always lit up my fancy. So raw, yet so refined, in so many ways. I could live here, I've always said that.

I like that it's so close to Vancouver Island, so close to what almost seems like a parallel universe, sometimes. Canada. I love my country, make no mistake. But I love Canada too. So big and fresh, outsized and in-your-face. So many of my changes happened there in that big, big land.

Port Angeles is literally the Olympic mountains front porch. It occupies that narrow band of real estate between salt water and the high country, between ancient and powerful forces, and it does it with such nonchalance that it makes itself beautiful. Does Port Angeles belong to the land or to the sea? Or neither? I don't know. But it belongs, there is no mistaking that.

Finally, I like coming to the PA symposium because it's laid back. It's out of the sturm und drang that modern commercial kayaking has become. Sure, Dave (of Olympic Raft and Kayak, the sponsor of the event), will sell you a boat and all the accompanying equipment, if you ask him. He is in business, after all. But it doesn't feel like a money thing... it feels like other sea kayak gatherings used to feel, back before all the boats started being made in China. Before it got so serious.

It's almost dark. I'm going to go for a walk out on the city pier and watch the lights of the city come on. It's a very good night on planet Earth and I am very happy with the view.