Hoh River Trail: Part 1

Hoh River Trail - May 9th-11th
Olympic National Park
Mileage: 19.7 round trip
Elevation Gain: 1000 feet

No Dogs Allowed

Our first overnight of the season and it was pretty eventful! We drove out to the peninsula Friday afternoon, stopped for burgers (decent) and shakes (outstanding) at Sully's in Forks. We car camped at the main campsite the first night so we could make a good start in the morning. There was a notice on the bulletin board at the main campsite saying there was an aggressive bull elk that had rolled a couple of tents in the past couple weeks. We had two people who had never been backpacking and one who had never even been car camping before. So that night (somewhat prophetically) we did sort of a brief overview of what to do should we run across wildlife.

Mostly the best thing to do with any animal is keep away from animals, they are not pets, they are not nice fluffy toys, they will fuck your shit up. We discussed getting the fuck out of dodge ASAP when it comes to things like Elk and Moose which are typically aggressive while rutting. They're mostly trying to get you to leave their territory. So you leave. But recently there have been some changes to the protocol with Black Bears. However, if you do run into a black bear (NOTE: This absolutely does not apply to Grizzlies, or more aggressive bears) and they notice you and begin to move toward you, you want to make yourself as big and load and threatening as possible. Previously the recommendation was to just curl up like a ball, to protect your insides, which is in fact the second step if the bear doesn't leave after you make a big ruckus. Then if they don't back off after you've made yourself small you roll over and, literally, punch them in the nose. Anyway, we discussed what to do and then spent some time enjoying the campfire and went to bed.

Next morning there was two elk in our campsite, they weren't aggressive and they moved off as soon as we started to stir. Some of our group was planning on just doing a day hike and then staying at the main campsite and car camping, but 7 of us started off hiking that next morning. Before we took off we stopped at the visitors center where there was an older notice about black bears but we weren't too worried about it, since we felt comfortable that we could get through the situation if it came up and the notice was a month old so...whatever.

The Hoh river trail is gorgeous. Really the only word that accurately describes a temperate rain forest is lush. There are tons of huge trees, which would probably be more impressive if I wasn't from the land of redwoods. Cedars and spruces are big, but they're not behemoths the way redwoods are. Even so, there were some giant cedars, which had recently fallen and been cut up, which made the whole place smell like clean hamster cage, which I really like.The trail stays pretty close to the river the whole time, but it's really the forested areas that are the best.

We had planned to camp about 10 miles in, attentive readers will notice the word planned, about 8 miles in we started to notice a bunch of the birches had bear scratches on them. We pressed on, aware, but not concerned. Bears are a fact of life when it comes to hiking and really the only thing to do is make plenty of noise and try not to startle them.

Everybody was starting to wear down a bit. 10 miles with a full pack is no joke especially for people who haven't ever really backpacked before. So we were pretty excited when we came around a corner and saw the campsites. Right about then Koko said "Guys there's a bear!!" We assumed he was joking... We were wrong. There was, in fact, a bear and he was, in fact, standing directly in the campsite...

Continued in  Part 2 next week!