On the second day, I woke up to a snow covered car and drove about an hour from Forks down to the Hoh Rain Forest. Given that I was in a small rental car, with…
Snow on the Hoh River.
Green, moss, and water everywhere. The Hoh Rain Forest gets 140-170 inches of rain a year, and even more water from heavy condensation. After a record dry year…
I started out with the 0.8 mile Hall of Mosses trail near the Visitor Center.
There are some great trees in this area.
These are called "nurse logs". A young tree grows on top of a fallen tree, feeding off its nutrients. Eventually, the fallen tree disintegrates and the young…
More interesting, moss covered trees.
On to the Hoh River Trail towards the Olympus Guard Station.
The first couple miles of the trail are very popular and too well groomed for my taste. But amazing scenery nonetheless.
Some large Sitka Spruce treefall on the trail. The snow got pretty heavy at times.
More big, mossy trees.
Great contrasts of rain forest and snowy river scenery.
The farther down the trail, the better the single track gets.
Without the sun being out, the camera just doesn't capture how bright these greens really are. And it's still winter. I can only imagine how green everything…
Great trail. Mick Dodge lives out in the rain forest somewhere around here. I was really hoping to find him!
A perfect stripe of snow falling through an opening in the tree canopy above.
One of the waterfalls along the trail falling into a series of cascades.
The cascades draining into the Hoh River below.
A cool bridge over the creek.
A came across a little herd of Elk. There were probably 7 or 8 of them, and I was able to get pretty close.