Olympic National Park is great. The trail to the alpine meadow is snowed in? How about a temperate rainforest instead?
Actually, even though there was wall-to-wall moss and giant purple trees:
...I'm not sure it was an actual rainforest. The trees certainly were tall, though:
In fact, they were tall even when they were on their sides - here's the root system of a big one that had just come down:
The winter storms that knocked down that tree also washed out the bridge we were supposed to use to cross these rapids:
So, we took the natural course of action: lunch.
Two plans came out of our meal-time strategizing: Steve and I tried to throw enough stones into the river to make a bridge (we figured we had enough), and Vinai looked for (and found) an alternate route across the river:
It was well worth it. The other side was like a cathedral, a big spongy yellow cathedral that I won't do justice to here.
It took more time to cover less distance than we expected in the cathedral, and we were running short on time, so we decided to ford the river on the way back:
In the picture above, Steve makes it look as the the water were not SO INSANELY COLD THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY REGRET STEPPING IN IT. I literally
ran across the river, because the pain of running across wet stones was
less severe than the pain of being in water that cold. It was so cold that when I dropped my boot in the river on the way across I thought, for a second, that I would
rather continue hiking with one boot than walk back 10 feet in that water to pick it up.
Oh, and Steve did it TWICE. The picture above shows how far he made it when trying to find out if it was too deep to cross.
Anyway, we all made it back to camp alive where there was roast pear enough for everyone.
It was a short hike, but we got to see more effects of winter storms:
and horrifying manifestations of primal evil:
We decided to catch the ferry back instead of driving all the way around Puget Sound, and it turned out to be a good move. Also, cucumber sandwiches:
Yum.
Olympic National Park is great. The trail to the alpine meadow is snowed in? How about a temperate rainforest instead?
Actually, even though there was wall-to-wall moss and giant purple trees:
...I'm not sure it was an actual rainforest. The trees certainly were tall, though:
In fact, they were tall even when they were on their sides - here's the root system of a big one that had just come down:
The winter storms that knocked down that tree also washed out the bridge we were supposed to use to cross these rapids:
So, we took the natural course of action: lunch.
Two plans came out of our meal-time strategizing: Steve and I tried to throw enough stones into the river to make a bridge (we figured we had enough), and Vinai looked for (and found) an alternate route across the river:
It was well worth it. The other side was like a cathedral, a big spongy yellow cathedral that I won't do justice to here.
It took more time to cover less distance than we expected in the cathedral, and we were running short on time, so we decided to ford the river on the way back:
In the picture above, Steve makes it look as the the water were not SO INSANELY COLD THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY REGRET STEPPING IN IT. I literally ran across the river, because the pain of running across wet stones was less severe than the pain of being in water that cold. It was so cold that when I dropped my boot in the river on the way across I thought, for a second, that I would rather continue hiking with one boot than walk back 10 feet in that water to pick it up.
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