It was a gorgeous sunny warm day in the low 70’s.
We hiked up the Hoh River valley. It is all old growth forest with giant trees. The trail goes all the way up to Blue Glacier on Mt Olympus. If you turn off to the left you can go to Sol Duc, which is where we were camped by the hot springs. It is just 2 drainages away. The sun and the fall colors on the trail were phenomenal.
The river is turquoise blue from the sediment from the glacier.
The red vine maples are in their prime with the sun on them. The trees are huge here.
Up valley toward Mt Olympus. We found these mushrooms that John thought might be chanterelles. He picked 3, took them back and looked them up in the mushroom book and could not decide-there are so many look alikes. So we did not eat them.
Mineral Creek and Mineral Creek falls.
Part of Tom Creek falls. It was big, like Mineral creek falls up above these, but it was impossible to get up to where you could see them. I tried and between neck deep ferns, huge fallen trees to crawl over and under, rotten logs, steep slope, etc. I decided they look fine from the trail. We had lunch on a gravel beach by the river. The sun was so nice that we hung out the rest of the afternoon.
On the way back the air was getting misty. This is looking way, way up one of the over 200 feet tall trees to the top. There are club moss and ferns growing on the branches, all lit up by sunlight.
The vine maples were floating in the understory. We scared up 5-6 cow elk on the trail.
The sunset in the misty valley was petty. The sun lit up the alders across the river nice and turned the Hoh river golden.
Looking up river, and down.
A white flower, dandelion, banana slug, yellow flower, a smiling rock and a buttercup.
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