The Hoh River Trail runs 17.5 miles from the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center to Glacier Meadows and is rated easy to Olympus Meadows and moderately strenuous beyond. The elevation gain for the entire length is 4200 feet, but 3000+ feet of that gain occurs in the final 5 miles. The extent of green in the photo above attests to the 180 inches of precipitation that falls in the rainforest area of the park which ranges from sea level to 750' elevation.
Nearly every inch of many trees and limbs display verdant mosses, giving an eerie Alfred Hitchcock look to the towering giants, and even downed trees (known as nurse logs) are prolific with verdant growth of lichens, mosses, licorice ferns, shrubs, and saplings.
The Hoh River of Olympic National Park is running low here in this July photo. June, July, and August are the "dry" season in the
Hoh Rain Forest with "only" 5 inches of rain each, as opposed to as much as 25 inches during each of the wettest months. As a result,
huge gravel/sand bars abound and provide areas to camp and also respite from the evening deluge of mosquitoes. We also saw deer
out on the gravel bars, and the abundance of driftwood there allows wonderful locations for an evening campfire.
The Olympic Mountains are spectacular as evidenced in this photo taken from Hurricane Ridge. Like Mount Denali,
not all visitors get to see the peaks due to the abundant fog which often obscures the mountaintops. Mount Olympus
(7965 feet above sea level) is at the right in this photo.