August 4-6, 2000
We had a free weekend in August and the weather was cooperating to allow us to visit the Olympic Peninsula again. We hoped to do the Enchanted Valley hike but the road was closed so we drove up the North Fork road, checked out the hiking from there and after talking to some other hikers decided to go to Low Divide at 16.5 miles up the North Fork of the Quinault. Here's the map of the hike in full, I put in a marker for where we camped at about 11.5 miles in and North is to the right on this...
We got a pretty late start due to the drive and spending an hour trying to figure out what we were going to do. We started up the trail hoping to get to Trapper's camp at about 8 miles before stopping. The first few miles were very easy and beautiful, following above the river over deep green pools and nice riffles. We began ascending slowly after Wolf Bar camp and began crossing lots of small creeks coming down the slopes. Catherine fell at one of these and hit her cheek on a rock which taught us to be extra, extra careful on slippery rocks. We continued to Wild Rose Creek for lunch then loaded up and kept hiking. Here's the crossing at Elip Creek where there was a very nice camp...
We kept on going and hit Trapper Camp finding it to be a mosquito infested, damp, dark hole and decided to bite the bullet and march on to Twelvemile, the next camp available. It was getting steeper and we were getting more and more tired. Finally we pulled into camp at about 6 p.m. after 7 hours of hiking. It was a nice camp, as you can see from this picture and the river was right next to us...
I fished a bit that evening and caught a few but all we really wanted to do was eat and get to bed.
We woke to another sunny day and began the steep march to Low Divide from camp with just butt packs and enough food and water to get us through the 10 mile day. The trail started out pretty moderate and we came to the crossing at 16-mile Camp which had us confused for a bit. The trail dead-ended at a gravel bar and there was a rope strung across the river. We soon realized this was our crossing and we had to ford the river via the rope. Here's Catherine doing the wading...
The trail steepened quite a bit after this point as we traversed up the slopes of Mt. Christie. Finally we came out into open meadow that was spectacular...
There were some large falls to our NW off the slopes of Mt. Seattle and Kimta Peak...
Going through the meadow we came upon a grouse that just didn't seem to care about us at all. We kept taking steps up to him and finally got only a few feet away when I took this shot. After we moved on we noticed babies around that she was probably trying to protect.
After crossing Low Divide we continued to the small alpine lake about .5 miles past the divide. Here is the lake on the approach...
We had the lake to ourselves for over an hour and got to swim (yes, it was cold), lie in the sun and eat a nice lunch before heading back down the trail. Here's the lake from our sun-bathing rock with Mt. Seattle in the background...
The hike down went pretty quickly and we got back to camp in the very early afternoon. I fished quite a bit in the afternoon and caught a surprising number of really nice rainbows in the river, some of them around 12-13" which I didn't expect.
The hike out was just a repeat of Day 1 but descending instead of ascending. The steepness seemed worse on the downhill direction though and we were getting ready for the flat lands at Wolf Bar. We arrived at Wolf Bar in time for a good snack and took some time to fish the river lower where I landed a few nice 'bows. We continued back to the car and got passed by a couple who asked about bears up high since they'd just passed one. We kept going and found another couple squatting by the trail obviously looking at something. There it was, the bear, about 25 yards away up on above the trail just munching on berries. We watched him a few minutes and he vanished. We moved up the trail a bit and saw him again heading down by the river. I tried to get some decent shots this second time but, as you can see, nothing came out too good. Look close - there is a bear in here...
After finishing the hike we drove to Lake Quinault Lodge and had a very nice dinner and reminisced about our wedding.
We did learn that the N-S hike through the spine of the park would be a very nice one at 44 miles total though you'd need a ride back to the originating trailhead. We basically did about 1/3 of this hike going to Low Divide. Oh well, something for later.