Press Route Hike 7/8/21 9:59:24 AM

We did the Press Expedition route in reverse, starting at N. Fork Quinault trailhead and ending at Madison Falls, for a total of 51 miles. We did it in 4 days/3 nights. Had beautiful weather the whole way, saw three bears, and had no major issues, though there were a few spots that were a bit sketchy.

Day 1: 11.5 miles. We started with a car exchange with friends who were hiking the route from north to south. We met them at a pull-out on Hwy 101 by the turn for the Olympic Hot Springs Rd. and traded cars. That way, each of us would have our own car waiting for us at the end. It was a 3-hour drive from there to the N. Fork Quinault trailhead, which we reached at 10 a.m.

20 minutes after hitting the trail, we saw our first bear. We heard a loud Huff! and saw a black furry mass among the salmonberries just 20 feet to our left. The bear briefly looked at us, moved a few feet away, and resumed gorging on berries.

We saw about a dozen other hikers the first day. There were a few camped at Elip Creek, and Trapper was full with a group. The two significant creek crossings were Wild Rose and Elip, both of which we were able to rock-hop without much trouble. The trail crosses a number of other creeks on good bridges, some over high narrow gorges. There was one very sketchy spot about 2 miles below 16 Mile Camp, where the trail runs for about 20 feet right at the crumbling edge of a big drop to the river. The Park Service trail crew really needs to reroute this part of the trail.

We camped at 12 Mile, where there were a few good tent sites. This camp is .7 miles before 16 Mile, and doesn't appear on the park's Wilderness Planner map, but does appear on the Green Trails map, labeled incorrectly as Twentymile Camp. There was once a shelter here, but we saw no sign of it. There's no privy or bear wire. There were some mosquitoes, but it wasn't too bad.

Day 2: 12.5 miles. We reached the ford at 16 Mile at 7 a.m. The previous day, we'd asked hikers coming the other way about conditions at the ford, and had gotten reports ranging from "thigh-deep" to "crotch-deep". Some thought it would be lowest in the morning. One told us about a couple who'd had a near-disaster there the day before when the husband slipped, went completely under, and couldn't get out of his pack. His wife, watching from shore, had to wade in to rescue him. So, we were bracing ourselves for a challenge, and decided to cross one at a time so we could spot each other. My friend, who's about 6 feet tall, went first. The river got deeper and stronger as he approached the far bank, and came to mid-thigh on him, but he crossed without mishap. I'm shorter, so the water was crotch-deep on me, and I found the current to be very powerful, so I was relieved to reach the far bank without a problem.

From 16 Mile, it was a 4-mile climb to Low Divide, with about a 1700 ft elevation gain. The trail was generally in good shape, though there were a number of blowdowns. It did not appear that any maintenance had been done on the trail recently. There were good switchbacks, so the ascent wasn't too taxing. The trail became quite brushy as we approached Low Divide, and the morning dew soaked our shorts. But Low Divide was lovely. Mt. Seattle rises above it, with a spectacular multi-tiered waterfall plunging from its side. We encountered a few other hikers there, who told us that a bear or two had been frequenting the area, but we didn't see any. The Low Divide ranger station was unoccupied, as seems typical for backcountry ranger stations in ONP.

Just after Low Divide came the lakes: Margaret and Mary. Camping is prohibited at both. Margaret is by far the more scenic. Just north of the lake, a path strikes off west from the trail to a nice rock outcropping overlooking the lake. We stopped there for an hour and took a dip and had lunch. My friend was carrying a snorkel and mask, as he often does on backpacking trips, and he swam around the lake for a while observing a multitude of newts in various stages of development.

Next came the steep 2.5-mile descent to Chicago Camp. This was the roughest stretch of trail on the whole trip. It was extremely brushy, and there several big, complicated blowdowns to work our way across. We were glad we were descending rather than climbing. As the terrain leveled out and we approached the Elwha crossing at Chicago Camp, a tangled blowdown blocked the trail, but we soon found the massive log that now serves as a convenient crossing of the river. Chicago Camp looked like a nice place to stay, but our objective was Wilder, another 5 miles north. The trail north of Chicago was quite brushy in places, and the way sometimes seemed a bit unclear, but we had no real navigation difficulties. We saw another bear here, feeding happily on salmonberries, and we watched it for 15 minutes from only 30 feet away. The bear was aware of us, but didn't seem to mind us.

About two miles north of Chicago is the second Elwha crossing. At one time in the distant past, there was an official log crossing here. Now, there's a signpost at a fork reading "Ford" and "Footlog", with arrows confusingly scratched out. The old footlog would have been directly ahead. We turned right, where the trail takes a jog upriver and eventually reaches a narrow fallen log that spans the river. It is not an actual footlog, and most people wouldn't want to try walking across it. You could scoot across it on your butt, but another log has fallen across it at the deepest part of the river, and you'd have to climb over that one to reach the other side. This was not an appealing prospect, so we opted to ford just downstream of the narrow log. The current was stronger than we'd expected, and as we approached the far bank the water was nearly waist-deep. This is not where we'd recommend fording. We crossed without mishap, and took a rough trail that cut back downstream toward the old crossing. Once we saw the river at that point, it was clear that we should have forded there instead. It didn't look much more than knee-deep anywhere.

From that crossing it was another three miles through gorgeous old-growth fir and cedar forest to Camp Wilder, where we met our friends who were hiking north-south. Camp Wilder is a nice spot, with a shelter, privy, bear wire, and plenty of room for tents.

Day 3: 12 miles. From Wilder, it was 3.7 miles to Hayes River. Like most of the route that we'd hiked so far, there had been no recent trail maintenance, and there were numerous blowdowns. There was one particularly sketchy spot about a half-mile before Hayes River where the trail skirted a near-vertical drop to the river far below, with the eroding bank carving out an overhang below the trail. There was a hole in the tread that opened to thin air.

After the Hayes River bridge, the trail was totally transformed. We didn't see a single blowdown from there all the way to the Whiskey Bend trailhead, and all brush had been whacked back. (We later learned that ONP had cleared the trail recently to provide access for fish biologists who are monitoring the Elwha restoration project.) It was easy going as we cruised through mossy groves of bigleaf maples in the Press Valley to Remann's Cabin, then Elkhorn (which had a shuttered ranger station, two shelters, and lots of open space for tents), and finally our camp at Mary's Falls. (Canyon Camp, which was a couple miles before Mary's, appeared to be inaccessible because of big blowdowns.) Mary's Falls was just okay. It was a brushy floodplain meadow with lots of flies, and the privy was some distance from the campsites, up a steep slope, and blocked by a pair of blowdowns that you have to crawl under. We discovered as we hiked out the next morning that there's a separate "group site" in the forest just off the main trail, which looked like a nicer place to camp.

Day 4: 15 miles. Shortly after leaving Mary's Falls, the forest changed abruptly from ancient mixed forest to young dense stands of Doug firs. There was a fire here a few years ago, so it'll be a while before the giant trees are back. It seems that the Lillian Valley escaped the blaze, though, because as we descended to Lillian Camp we were once again in ancient forest. Lillian seemed like a nice place to camp, and we saw a party there enjoying it. In another four miles we were at the Whiskey Bend trailhead, and it was 7 miles of road walking to Madison Falls. We discovered that there are two options for bypassing the washout on Olympic Hot Springs Road. The official bypass trail cuts high above the river, and so entails some significant elevation gain, but there's another trail that stays closer to the river, and we were glad we took that one instead.