Day 123 on the road: Backpacking into the enchanted wilderness of the Hoh River rain forest

PORT ANGELES, WA – On Monday morning Elizabeth dropped me off at the Hoh River Visitor Center in Olympic National Park, where I began a three-day, 32-mile backpacking trip into the only rainforest in the lower 48 states.

That day I hiked nine miles along the Hoh River, over streams and through the lush forest of ferns and moss-covered trees to the Olympus Ranger Station campground. I pitched my tent near the river and cooked myself a dinner of ramen noodles on my Jetboil stove. Separating the trail from my campsite was a small stream and a lovely grove of alder trees. The only amenities at the campsite were a basic outhouse and a “bear wire,” a contraption to allow campers to hang their food out of reach of animals. (A ranger told me the most likely predators were not bears but cayotes.)

On Tuesday I left my camping stuff behind and headed another seven miles up the trail into the wilderness to Elk Lake. The trail took me over High Hoh Bridge, which crosses about a hundred feet above the Hoh River as it passes down from the Hoh Glacier and through a gorge. Above the bridge the trail climbed for another three miles and more than a thousand feet in elevation past Elk Lake. From there I could glimpse Mount Olympus and the snowfields around it. On Wednesday I packed up my stuff and backpacked the nine miles back to the visitor center.

Of all the hikes I’ve enjoyed through God’s creation, this was unique. I had never camped two nights on the trail, and I had never ventured so far (16 miles) into a wilderness area from the trailhead. The Hoh River rain forest was also enchantingly beautiful. This Pacific-facing side of the park receives more than 10 feet of rain a year, creating a true rain forest unlike anything I’d experienced before, certainly not in the United States. The appeal of this hike was not so much the stunning vistas as it was atmosphere. The quiet, deep-green forest felt like the backdrop for a scene from “Jurassic Park” or “Lord of the Rings.” At a number of points on the trail, I just had to stop and soak in the ambiance. I had never felt so far removed from civilization.

Although I was hiking on my own, I wasn’t alone on the journey. People on the trail are invariably friendly, and the comradery grows the further out and the less populated the trail becomes. I crossed paths several times with a young park ranger named Katie, who graduated from Burke High School in Virginia. The first time we met she politely asked me to show my backpacking permit, which I was able to display on my iPhone. Further up the trail toward Elk Lake I talked with a 31-year-old physician’s assistant named Alex who hails from New England but now lives in Washington State. We talked about how much we enjoyed the Stephen Ambrose book on Lewis and Clark, about geology and our shared passion for hiking. When I was thinking of turning around just above Elk Lake, Alex encouraged me to climb a mile or so further across an ice bridge for even better views.

And it wasn’t just people I met on my trek. I also encountered deer and a rabbit at the campground and a mother bird on the trail with four chicks in tow.