Craig July 12, Hurricane Ridge

Located just south of Port Angeles, after a long winding climb, is Hurricane Ridge. This is the best place in the park to view the many snow capped peaks with their myriad of glaciers. You can guess how it got its name, but to our delight it was anything but its namesake.

We stopped at the visitor center to get the lay of the land. We have come to learn the National Park System well after traveling it extensively these last three summers. You don’t venture into any of these parks without an extensive inquisition of the ranger on duty when you arrive at one. This can make or break your visit as they are usually very up to date on what is going on. This includes animal sightings, road conditions and sometimes if you ask the right questions, a tidbit that is not generally made known to the general public. Today we were just looking for a ranger led hike that the kids needed to complete their Junior Rangers program, which we found.

We headed up the road to the ridge. It was cloudy and we even encounter a little drizzle. The road was tight, slow and twisty, with a few 100-200 yard tunnels thrown in. My kids hate these. Not because they are afraid of them though, its because they know I will be all over the horn the entire distance through it! It doesn’t matter if there are cars or not, I will be laying on the horn! Anyone who knows my kids knows they embarrass easily. All I hear is … “DAD, STOP IT!! STOP IT! AHHHHH!!!!” HEH HEH HEH! [full belly laugh] is my reply.

So we made the ridge and had a look around. There was a nice visitors center at the top with incredible views. To the south, snow capped peaks. To the north, Port Angeles, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Victoria. But something was missing, there was no wind.

We quickly hit the time for the ranger led hike and wandered over to the meeting place. The rangers name was Janice Berger. We took off across the parking lot and up a short hill, where we stop in a grove of rather short trees. Ranger Janice explains that while it is hot as blazes right now and there is absolutely no wind at all, this is not usually the case. The ridge is at 5200’ and in the winter the wind can blow upward of 100 mph for days at a time. The wind combined with the blowing snow can actually sandblast the bark off of the trees. She used Matt and another boy to demonstrate how the trees do survive in these horrible conditions. Sub-alpine Fir and Mountain Hemlock are the predominant species this close to the tree line. Matt was a hemlock, which bends under the weight of the snow, often covered completely and out of harms way. The other boy was the fir, which bends, but generally fights the wind and tries to stand tall. We saw where these trees were literally snapped off at about the 25’ level. This was the level of the snow. They lost the battle with the wind due to the unusually large snow fall that year. The smaller diameter trunks 10-12” at the top were not able to withstand the blasts and were snapped off. We continued the hike and were brought up to speed on the limited flora and fauna that are able to survive at this altitude and in the harsh climate. I enjoy this kind of stuff as do the kids, so we all had a good time!

We explored a little more, taking in lesser traveled dirt road that was closed due to snow on it. The sign said if you were hiking beyond the closure, you should have an ice axe and other equipment. I’ll bet I could have made it in the Jeep. ;)

We headed home after that. We all had some tasks that need to be attended to. So with a few extra hours left in the day this was a good time to get them taken care of. I needed to wash the Jeep and put on some new wiper blades. The weather report kept threatening a little rain and my blades were horrible. Who needs them in AZ.

Tomorrow we are off to a site closer to Seattle.

Leah July 12: Hurricane Ridge

We went to Hurricane Ridge today. We also went on a ranger walk. When we got to Hurricane Ridge, we went into the visitor center. We stayed there until the meadow ranger walks started. When the ranger came out to meet us she talked to us about Hurricane Ridge. We talked about how some trees didn’t have bark on one side. The wind blew off the bark of the trees, leaving them bare. She told us that there were 2 kinds of trees in Olympic National Park. They are sub alpine fir and the western hemlock. The western hemlock is droopy at the top and the sub alpine isn’t. My favorite stop was the last one. We learned that marmots drop their body temp to around 40* F when hibernating. When we finished the walk we drove down a road that led to nowhere. We turned around at PJ Lake. We didn’t hike the trail. We just drove back to the RV. Mom had to do laundry so Matt and I went to the arcade in the campground. We played air hockey, then we played ping-pong. We didn’t play for points, we just played for fun. When we ran out of money we went back to the RV. Then we watched TV until bedtime.

Matt July 12: Back to Olympic National Park

Today we went to Hurricane Rige in Olympic National Park. After we were in the park we went to the Hurricane Rige Visitor Center. At the visitor center we went on a half mile Ranger hike. On the hike we talked a lot about plants and animals. Also, we saw a marmot home. As we were walking to the jeep, we saw two deer laying down next to the visitor center. We snapped a few pictures and ate lunch. After lunch we drove on a dirt road that lead to Obstruction Point. But the road was closed. There was a 0.9 mile hike to PJ Lake, but we didn’t hike it. We turned around and drove back to the motor home.