Tuesday - Day Four - Washington Trip

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Tuesday ended up being a beautiful day, a bit of clouds during the morning, but this broke by 10 am or so, and the sun shined.The view of Lake Quinault from the cabin was amazing! It was so peaceful and relaxing. Several other cabins sat up more on the bluff towards the road and while quaint didn't have as nice of views.

Locharie resort has several canoes that are free to use. The entire family headed out in the canoe across the lake to canoe up Canoe Creek. We were warned by the caretaker to not try to go up the Quinalt River since the current could get quite strong. Stacey rod up front, Kiah sat on an extra life jacket on the floor of the canoe, and I sat in the rear with Sofi between my legs sitting on another extra life jacket. I get a little nervous in canoes. When I was a boy scout my father and I went on a high adventure activity canoeing into Lake Shoshone in Yellowstone. While on the lake, storms come up rapidly and we got caught in one and the waves capsized us. While we had life jackets on the cold water and the shock of swimming in it, still leaves me with latent fears.

We traversed the end of the lake fine, and made our way up what we thought was Canoe Creek, however it soon became clear that we were actually on the Quinalt river. The initial current was not strong, but we stopped at a bend in the river and the river from that point on had some pretty strong current. You can see the current line in back of Stacey in the picture above. We turned back here, pushing Stacey's end of the canoe to the left and back down stream. However the front end of the canoe then caught the current, and we were headed for a downed tree in the river ahead of us. Instead of back cutting the canoe on the left hand side which would have turned the canoe sharply to the left, I tried to steer left by paddling with the current on the right hand side of the canoe. However since we had the current with us, we covered a lot more river more quickly than we had space to turn right hard enough and miss the tree. So we headed STRAIGHT for the tree. Stacey panically said "What do I do?" and I panically said back "There is nothing I can do, try to grab a branch above you head" Stacey reached out with her arms and grabbed a small branch that was about 4 inches in diameter as we slammed into the tree. She bent all the way backwards and we halted dead on in the tree. Had we hit the tree sideways we would have capsized for sure. Whew! We were able to push around the branches and then back down the river.

We then figured out that the next creek over was in fact Canoe Creek, and we proceeded to paddle up it for some distance, the water was very calm and there was no current, it was a nice change of pace.

Early on in the afternoon Stacey and Sofi laid down to take a nap and Kiah and I went off in the rent to go hiking up on the ridge above Quinalt Lake. We ended up driving around on logging roads across National Forest Lands. The view from the tops of the ridges was nice, but driving through clear-cuts was disconcerting, as I think clear-cuts always are. We finally could go no further because of a downed log in our path and we turned back.

Later in the afternoon we drove up north shore road and started up the north fork trail. The sun was shining and it was an amazing april afternoon in the Olympics.

The crest of the Olympic peaks were snow covered and visible as we walked up the trail. The trail itself winds along the north fork of the Quinalt River is beautiful. We soon came to a large nexus of streams with a wide range of small rocks strewn across an open area. Stacey and the girls stopped, while I walked up the trail a bit further.

The trail began crossing small creeks and there were some small 'islands' that created between the main river and the small tributaries. I cam across a downed tree that completely crossed the river, it was easy to walk across without any real balance issues since the log was so large.

I quickly reached a grove of huge Douglas Firs, truly an old growth forest. Only when there is fire to clear out other tree's do fir's get a chance to grow and get above canopy. They were huge, I have no idea how old they were. It was amazing to hike through them with prehistoric ferns everywhere. It felt like you were walking in Jurassic Park. The sunlight streaming through the trees was very nice.

Rejoining Stacey and the girls, we headed beck down the trail to where we had parked the car. I carried Sofi on my back (her usual mode of travel). The pictures here show a small creek we stopped and posed by.

Of course no hike in the Olympic forests is complete without sighting banana slugs, here are two very large and different varieties. They are very slimy when you touch them.

Driving back on the north shore road, we came upon a large herd of Roosevelt Elk grazing in a meadow. They were mostly all doe's but there were a couple of young bucks. Back at the cabin we cooked up a good old fashion american meal of pork chops.

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