Olympic - Rainforests

That's a lot of moss

The reason we were staying in Forks was to visit the Hoh River rainforest part of the national park. This is meant to be one of the largest temperate rainforest in the US and receives something like 3.5m of rain every year. Unfortunately it was the middle of a drought when we went, which on the upside means you get better weather for hiking. The mosses were perhaps less spectacular than they usually are, having shrivelled a bit and turned brown.

We decided on a walk out to 5-mile island, this is along the Hoh river for most of the walk, unfortunately it was an out-and-back. It seemed hard to construct loop walks without either staying out for 3 days, or walking for less than a mile. I'll take what I can get though, and it was a very pleasant, easy walk. Just enough to get us ready for what we had coming up.

There were great ferns, big trees and a lot of moss all the way along the trail. I could definitely go back here and construct some sort of through walk from Hoh valley to Sol Duc valley, which is the next one over. There wasn't much wildlife, which was a bit surprising, at least maybe some more birds, given all the trees.

Nice, easy trail

We could tell when we were getting close to the car park on the return. The density of other walkers along the trail is definitely some sort of power law.

It's these sorts of walks that keep us coming back to the US, it's so different from anything you get in the UK. And it just feels so big, with this crazy thick undergrowth.

Yet more waterfalls

Cool trees around here