2006-07-02 The Journey 2006-07-03 Orcas Island 2006-07-04 Orcas Island to Victoria 2006-07-05 Victoria to Olympic NP 2006-07-06 Olympic NP 2006-07-07 Olympic NP to Seattle 2006-07-08 Seattle CVS

Day 5 - Thursday, July 6, 2006

We had covered a lot of ground by ferry in the past two days, but today we would stay put and do some human-powered exploration of the Sol Duc area in Olympic National Park.  Olympic is a vast preserve, and we could only hope for a taste of its Olympic goodness during the day and a half that we had there.  But I, for one, was intent on making it as big of a taste as possible.  We followed the normal morning ritual of packing a lunch at the van, sitting down to breakfast at the lodge, then rendezvousing at the van again to drive to wherever we would be hiking.

Sol Duc lies about 6 or 7 miles due south of the lodge, as the crow flies, but due to the necessity of circumnavigating Aurora Ridge and Sourdough Mountain, it takes 20-30 minutes to get there by car.  We parked at the Sol Duc campground and hiked the 3/4 mile trail up the Sol Duc River to Sol Duc Falls.  From there, we split off from the Sol Duc River and followed Canyon Creek 3 miles and 1500 feet up to Deer Lake.  Deer Lake is a snowmelt lake that sits at 3500 feet ASL, just below the drainage divide between the Sol Duc and Bogachiel Rivers.  Deer Lake forms the headwaters of Canyon Creek, which descends at a dizzying rate and confluences with the Sol Duc River just below the falls.

I can describe the hike up to Deer Lake in one word:  trees.  And plenty of them.  The trees in Olympic National Park come in three sizes:  big, bigger, and friggin' huge.  The low-hanging clouds blotted out a good portion of the sun, and the canopy hundreds of feet over our head took care of the rest.  Pretty much every photo was a timed exposure taken off of my handy backpacker's tripod.  Up at Deer Lake, we had reached the cloud ceiling, which hung over the lake like a thick Aberdeen fog.  There was still snow on the ground, the wind was blowing, and it was impressively chilly for July.  I keep forgetting that 3500 feet in the northern latitudes is a lot like 10,000 feet in Colorado, except that there's more air.

On the way up, I was hiking way ahead of the group so as to have time to set up my tripod, but I was stopping enough times that Paul, Eric, and Sue arrived at the lake only a few minutes after I did.  Having had a sandwich -- and about as much as we could stand of the cold -- we started back down toward Sol Duc.  Near the falls, we split off from the Sol Duc Trail and followed the Lover's Lane Trail, which roughly parallels the Sol Duc River for 3 1/2 miles and terminates at the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort.

The original Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort was the creation of timber baron Michael Earles, who came to the hot springs in 1903 when his doctors told him he was dying (sensing a theme, here?)  Earles underwent a miraculous recovery, and, believing that the hot springs had cured him, he optioned to buy the land from its current owner.  When the current owner died in 1909, the deal went through, and Earles spent more than half a million dollars over the next few years to develop the Sol Doc hot springs into a world-class resort and spa.  Included in the development were a 165-room four-star hotel, a 100-bed sanitorium, a bathhouse, a gym, a golf course, tennis courts, etc.  Also included in the construction was a $75,000 road from Lake Crescent to Sol Duc, financed solely by Earles, a road that allowed him to transport in a sawmill to cut the more than 2 million board feet of lumber needed to build the resort.  Earles' resort opened for business in 1912 but unfortunately burned to the ground just four years later.  Earles died a broken man in 1919.  Buildings have been added to the site, and some of these have also burned down, in intervening years.  The Park Service purchased the land in 1966 and completely rebuilt the resort in the 1980's.

We arrived at the resort around 3 PM, having hiked 10 1/2 miles or so.  I could've easily gone another 3 or 4 miles, but we were all out of trail.  So we availed ourselves of the hot springs and waited for the other part of the group to arrive.  After everyone had  had a chance to soak their heads, it was back to the lodge for a shower and our last dinner of the tour.  I had the hal...  the salmon.