Quinalt Rainforest

Left to right: Zachariah, Hunter, Mike, Jeff, Doug, Eldon, Randy at the Ivery lake trail head

This year we returned to the Olympic National Forest for our yearly "Man-Hike" as my family now refers to it. None of us have spent much time in the Olympics so when we were doing the planning we thought we would try and do a north to south transect of the national park. We only had 4 days to do it and when I started the planning I had some bad information that said it was only a 3-4 day hike. Turns out that was pretty unrealistic, the actual mileage was near 60 miles through pretty rough terrain in some parts. We probably could have pulled it off hiking 15-20 miles a day, but it would have been rough. So we settled on an easier trek up to the Skyline Ridge trail in the Olympic Wilderness area, climb up to Kimta Peak, and then descend to the valley and Quinalt river and follow it back to the Ivery trail head.

The trail started out easy enough. The rainforest is nice and cool and there were toads everywhere, literally, it was hard not to step on them there were so many. Just like in 2009, we picked the perfect week to do our hike with beautiful blue sky, sunshine, and high temperatures. The only downside is we had some serious elevation gains along the way, which coupled with the heat made the hiking a little rough.

Doug getting some water

Jeff contemplating the vast size of the "World's Largest Yellow Cedar" standing behind him on the right side of the picture, we were expecting a tree you could drive Grandma's Oldsmobile through, apparently old growth cedar don't get that big

The first day we started out on the Ivery Lake trail and climbed up 4000 feet in 11 miles past the Three Lakes camp and stopped at the Three Prune camp.

Alpine lakes scattered along the trail up to Three Prune

"Ah, young Grasshopper I will teach you in the way of the Jetboil...", Eldon and Hunter making some food

Resting at camp, Randy looks beat, Doug is ready for another 5 miles

Jeff felt like he needed to work on his abs after a long day of legs only workout

The group at Three Prune campsite, I don't know what happened to Doug in this picture

We set out early the next morning leaving our camp set up at Three Prune. The plan was what looked like an easy 10-12 mile round trip along the Skyline Ridge primitive trail to Kimta Peak and back. The elevation gain per the map was no more than about 1300 feet. We should have looked a little closer about how many times the trail crossed back and forth over the contour lines. By the end of the day we had ascended another 4121 feet of elevation with a net gain of zero as we made it back to Three Prune. It also didn't help that we went about 4 miles past Kimta Peak before we realized we had passed it. The total mileage for day 2 was 16 miles. Mike and I came up on a good size black bear on the trail right before we decided we had gone too far, so it wasn't a total loss. We tried to follow him which worked for like 100 feet until he decided he didn't like us. He turned and looked at us, peed, poo'ed, and then ran off the trail into the bushes.

Before we left Three Prune for Kimta Peak we had met some hikers that had come from that direction. They told us there was no water between the campsite and Kimta Peak. So expecting none we pumped a lot but within a mile of camp saw the first bit of water melting into a large pool from a snow patch. After we passed Kimta Peak (though we didn't know it was Kimta Peak at the time) we started seeing good creeks every few minutes. Mike, Jeff, and I kept scoffing at the bad information... until we realized we had passed Kimta by like 4 miles. Oh well, we saw a bear and the ridge trail has some amazing views, so no loss there.

The real Kimta Peak

Following a black bear

Getting a little closer

Dead shade trees

This water looked soo delicous, I was a little dehydrated. I drank almost 5 liters of water on the Kimta hike day and still couldn't pee at the end of the day!

Looking across at what we mistakenly thought was Kimta Peak from the actual Kimta Peak

West of Kimta Peak

South of Kimta Peak

Doug

Randy and Jeff pumping water

Morning fog creeping up out of the Quinalt river valley

The 3rd day we packed up Three Prune camp and headed down into the Quinalt River valley. We still had to ascend out of the camp area and by the time we hit the valley floor we had ascended another 921 feet bringing our total gross elevation gain for the trip to just over 9000 vertical feet. On the valley floor we had dropped all but 500 feet of our elevation gain. We rested at the trail intersection next to the river. When Randy got there we told him we had to go 3 more miles to camp and he gave us the signature Randy "you're kiddin' me!". Apparently the whole trip we kept telling him "just three more miles..." and then it was really like 6 or 8 more miles until the real end. When we got to the river campsite only 2.5 miles from the parking lot we all decided it would be real nice to have Subway, surprise our wives with an early return, and sleep in real beds so we pushed on to the cars. Subway was good, the wives had sent the kids to Grandma buttons house so they could have a girls night and so they were not really excited to see us, but it was sure nice to sleep in a real bed. The total mileage for 3 days was just over 40 miles. The Quinalt rain forest and Skyline Ridge were beautiful. We'll be back!

Descending into the valley

Reaching the valley floor

Finally made it to the river, water was a balmy 57 degrees