Just inside the Hurricane Ridge entrance booth to Olympic National Park we did a short hike on a cool spring day. The Heart O’the Hills Trail starts inside the campground and goes out and back. Our hike was pretty near 5 miles but we did a bit of extra credit to get to Lake Creek.
The first part of the trail seems fairly well traveled but we didn’t see many people on this spring weekday. This isn’t a destination hike so much if you only have a few days to visit the area but we’re here for the summer so we hope to do EVERYTHING. Immediately the hike enters an emerald jungle of ancient conifers. I LOVE the smell of cedar and there is plenty of it on this hike. BIG cedar. Old growth and second growth pack in. The trail becomes rougher, narrower and a little brushy past the first mile where I guess most people turn around. This where the decent kind of starts.
Our aim was to get to the creek. This requires climbing down a steep embankment at the end of the designated trail. The Olympic torrent salamander, a creature of fast moving waters, is a special find in this area. It is unique to the Olympic Peninsula and lives nowhere else in the world! We didn’t see one though. We did see a slug, woodpeckers and deer.
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