The Queen of the Park

Mount Olympus in the distance

The last walk we did in Olympic was just amazing. I had found it mentioned a few times on the web, the High Divide loop, sounded just want I was after. A high ridge circular walk. Only downside was that it was 33km with something like 1200m elevation gain, but I thought we could manage that. We just had to keep moving. Most of the time this is done as a 2-3 day hike, so nearly everyone else we met on the trail were doing it in a few days. We did meet another person who seemed to be doing it as a day walk. They were super fast, like Olympic walker fast, it was quite incredible watching them go. They also managed to overtake us twice without us ever overtaking them, not sure how they managed that.

Deer lake - didn't see deer though

Waterfall at the start

I can see why the campsites along here are some of the only ones in the park which require proper reservation permits. It really was the queen trail of the park. A loop, a ridge, amazing views, lakes, forests, mountains, it had it all. We started pretty early, so nobody else was on the track, in fact we didn't see anyone until we hit the first campsite. It's a bit of an uphill slog for the whole morning. We had lunch on the top of Bogachiel peak, and from there it was almost all downhill.

I unfortunately stopped taking photos kind of early in the day. It was so incredibly hot and we ran out of water with 5kms to go. That wasn't pleasant, we could have filled up from a river if we were desperate, I should have taken my steripen with us. I have a new awesome backpack with bladder. I'm totally sold on the bladder idea, one downside is that you have no clue how much water you have left. It would be nice to have some sort of warning message somehow. Since it was so hot I was just sucking it down, and really I should have rationed a bit more carefully.

View of Deer Lake, we started in the valley below that

The end of the walk was really great too, you are following a river through this thick forest, and the trail is lovely and soft under your feet. And it is all downhill, there is hardly even one step of uphill, so I really should have mustered the energy to take a few more photos. The trail was fairly quiet too, except right at the end when you reappear back on the waterfall track, apparently there had been a bear sighting right at the trail head, so everyone we met was pretty excited. We saw no bear though, must have eaten it's full of tourists by the time we got back.

Seven lake basin

Typical trail - great forest

We weren't really worried about bears on this walk, the biggest fear was mountain goats. There were heaps of signs up saying beware of the aggressive goats. These are not little spindly ibexes or anything but massive goats, if they decided they didn't like you they could definitely cause trouble. They had once gored someone to death, so you don't want to come against one of those. Though in the end we didn't see any wildlife, no bears, no deers, no goats. Perhaps it was too hot for them.

The trails the whole way round were great, it was only right at the start that we managed to go wrong, again I blame Scotland. I'm just not used to these beautifully large trails. We managed to follow some muddy deer track for a few hundred metres before we realised it was going the wrong way. Overall it was super easy to follow the trails, which was good, since we didn't have much in the way of a map, no 1:20000 for this walk. There were signposts at all the junctions though so really it was pretty easy.

Mt Olympus with glaciers

You get a fantastic view of Mt Olympus on this walk too, much better than what you get at Hurricane ridge. It feels like you are a lot closer to the mountain, and it really does look foreboding. It's like an open mouth, with sharp teeth and full or ice and snow.

Heart Lake

Once you have looped around Seven Lakes basin, which looked strangely volcanic, and had your fill of the views over to Mt Olympus it was then the long descent. Starting with a stroll down to Heart Lake, it really did look like a heart. And the forest below this lake was just amazing, some of the best I'd been in. We hardly saw the sun for the rest of the day, since the canopy was so thick. I can't recommend this loop enough, it really is one of the great (long) day walks.