The 90% I couldn’t Paint
From the Wanderlust Print Club letters
This month I want to take you somewhere I have been trying to get to for years, not with my feet, but with my brush. Welcome to Olympic National Park, and to the Hoh Rainforest, one of the last great temperate rainforests in the contiguous United States, and one of the most alive, overwhelming, humbling places I have ever stood.
If you are here for the practical stuff first, I have put it at the top. Scroll past it for the long version, the stories, the myths, and the reasons I keep failing to paint this place.
What to Pack
Olympic holds four completely different ecosystems inside one boundary, which means you are essentially packing for four trips. Layers are not optional here.
The essentials
A genuinely waterproof rain shell, not a water-resistant one. The Hoh gets 12 to 14 feet of rain a year and it can rain in July.
Rain pants if you are visiting outside high summer.
Waterproof hiking boots, already broken in.
Wool socks, and a second pair in your daypack. Cotton will make you miserable.
A warm mid layer. Hurricane Ridge sits above 5,000 feet and stays cold even when the coast is mild.
A swimsuit and a quick-dry towel. Trust me on this one. Lake Crescent is the reason.
Offline or printed maps. Cell service across most of the park ranges from spotty to nonexistent.
A headlamp, because the rainforest canopy makes late afternoon feel like dusk.
Bug spray for the summer months, especially in the high meadows.
A water filter or purification tablets for anything longer than a short loop.
Sun protection. It sounds absurd in a rainforest, but the alpine sun at Hurricane Ridge is fierce.
If you are heading to the coast
A tide chart, or a tide app downloaded before you lose signal. Several beach routes are only passable at low tide and people get cut off every year.
Sandals or shoes you do not mind soaking, for creek crossings.
If you are staying overnight in the wilderness
A wilderness camping permit, reserved in advance for popular zones.
An approved bear canister. Black bears are present throughout the park.
A tent with a real rainfly and a groundsheet. Everything here is damp, always.
What I bring that you might not
A small watercolor kit and a waterproof sketchbook cover. Paper does not dry in the Hoh. Plan accordingly.
A thermos. There are no services once you turn off Highway 101 toward the rainforest.
The Hikes
I have sorted these by ecosystem, because that is really how the park works. Distances are round trip unless noted.
Rainforest
TrailDistanceDifficultyNotesHall of MossesAbout 0.8 milesEasyThe one you came for. Bigleaf maples draped in hanging moss. Go early.Spruce Nature TrailAbout 1.2 milesEasyQuieter than Hall of Mosses, and it takes you down to the river.Hoh River TrailUp to 17+ miles one wayEasy to strenuousFlat and gorgeous for the first five miles. Continues all the way toward Mount Olympus if you have the days.
Lake and old growth
TrailDistanceDifficultyNotesMarymere FallsAbout 1.7 milesEasyOld growth forest to a 90-foot falls. Good for all ages.Mount Storm KingAbout 4 milesStrenuousSteep, exposed, with a rope-assisted final scramble. The lake view is the payoff. Skip it if you are uneasy with heights.Sol Duc FallsAbout 1.6 milesEasyThe most photographed waterfall in the park, and it earns it.
Coast
TrailDistanceDifficultyNotesRialto Beach to Hole-in-the-WallAbout 4 milesEasy, tide dependentSea stacks and driftwood. Check the tide chart before you start.Ruby BeachUnder a mileEasyA short walk down to one of the great sunset beaches in the country.Second BeachAbout 4 milesModerateA forest descent that opens onto sea stacks.
Mountains
TrailDistanceDifficultyNotesHurricane HillAbout 3.2 milesModeratePaved at the start, big views the whole way. Marmot territory.High Divide and Seven Lakes BasinAbout 18 miles loopStrenuousThe classic Olympic backpacking loop. Alpine meadows, ridgelines, and Mount Olympus across the valley. Permit required for overnights.
Now, the Long Version
I have spent more hours painting this place than I have spent painting anything else. Painting after painting, entire afternoons lost to the attempt. The Hoh Rainforest resists being painted. It is so dense, so dark, so layered with living things stacked on top of living things, and with watercolor as my medium I would lose the vibrance with each layer I put down.
Emily Carr, the great Canadian painter, spent her life obsessed with the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. Her red cedars undulate with life like living muscle. She once wrote that "the liveness in me just loves to feel the liveness in growing things." I read that and thought, yes. Exactly. That is what I have been trying to paint.
This month's print is the first painting of the Hoh that I am willing to show the world, and even now I will tell you honestly: I think I captured maybe ten percent of its glory. The other ninety percent you will simply have to go find yourself.
So let's talk about where you are going.
Four Parks in One
Olympic National Park sits on the Olympic Peninsula in northwestern Washington State, and it does something no other park in the country quite manages. It holds four completely distinct ecosystems inside one boundary.
There is the wild Pacific coastline, 73 miles of untouched beach, sea stacks, and tide pools. There are the glacier-capped mountains at the center, rising nearly 8,000 feet in just 40 miles from the sea. There is the old growth forest, ancient and cathedral-quiet. And then there is the rainforest, the Hoh and her sister valleys, the Queets, the Quinault, the Bogachiel, all of them dripping and green and impossible.
UNESCO named Olympic a World Heritage Site, describing it as the largest protected area in the world's temperate region to contain, in a single connected complex, everything from ocean edge through rainforest and alpine meadow up to glaciated peaks. Pack for all four of them.
The Hoh
The Hoh receives 12 to 14 feet of rain every year. Not inches. Feet. Scientists believe it may hold more living matter per acre than almost anywhere else on Earth. There are over 100 types of moss alone. The trees grow to 300 feet tall, draped in curtains of green that filter the light into something soft and cathedral-like.
The Hoh people, the Chalá·at, whose name means "People of the Hoh River," have lived in this watershed for thousands of years. Their entire world was built from it: cedar canoes, woven baskets, longhouses. Salmon from the river, berries from the forest floor. Their oral traditions say that the Thunderbird, T'ist'ilal, lived beneath the Blue Glacier below Mount Olympus, and would fly down to the sea to snatch whales the way an eagle snatches a salmon. When he dropped one, it would crash into the slopes and become the great Whale Rocks of the western Olympics.
I love that. The whole landscape as mythology. Every landform with a story.
The hike you want here is the Hall of Mosses, a short loop that winds through bigleaf maple and Sitka spruce so draped in hanging moss that you feel like you have walked into a painting. If you have more time, add the Spruce Nature Trail, which is usually quieter and drops you down to the river. And if you have days rather than hours, the Hoh River Trail follows the water upstream into progressively wilder rainforest, all the way toward Mount Olympus.
Lake Crescent
I have to tell you about Lake Crescent, because I swam in it and ate huckleberries on the shore afterward, and it was one of those afternoons that stays with you.
Lake Crescent is glacially formed, and its water is so nitrogen-poor that it grows almost no algae, which means it is the most impossible shade of deep turquoise you have ever seen.
The Klallam and Quileute tribes tell it this way: long ago the two tribes were at war beneath Mount Storm King, and the mountain grew so angry at the senseless fighting that it hurled a great boulder down into the valley, killing the warriors and damming the river. That is how the lake was made. For generations, Native people would not go near it.
What makes this legend extraordinary is that geologists have since confirmed the event. An enormous landslide really did dam the valley and create Lake Crescent, roughly 7,000 years ago. Thousands of years of oral tradition, borne out by science.
The High Country
Lastly you must go up into the mountains. Hurricane Ridge sits at 5,242 feet, with views stretching to Mount Olympus in one direction and the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the other. This is where the park gets genuinely wild and demanding.
For those who want off the beaten path, the High Divide Trail is an 18-mile loop through alpine meadows, ridgelines with views of Mount Olympus, and the Seven Lakes Basin, each lake a different shade of cold. Black bears are present throughout the park, and up here you will feel that reality in your bones.
The Olympic marmot lives up here too, endemic to this peninsula and found nowhere else on Earth. They will stop what they are doing and watch you, unbothered, from their rocks.
Planning Notes You Will Thank Me For
Arrive before ten in the morning. The parking lots at the Hoh fill by mid-morning on summer days, and wait times at the entrance station can stretch to two hours at midday.
Check road conditions before you drive out. The Upper Hoh Road is the only vehicle access to the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center, campground, and trailheads, and it has closed more than once in recent years after flooding washed out sections of it. Check the park's Alerts and Conditions page or call the recorded information line before you commit to the drive.
Give yourself extra time on Highway 101. The two-lane road that loops the peninsula is shared with logging trucks and summer construction. I have sat at a one-lane traffic light for 20 to 30 minutes.
Download everything in advance. Cell service throughout the park is limited. Print your maps. Save your reservations offline. This is not a place you can wing.
Book campsites early. Summer reservations for the Hoh Campground go through Recreation.gov and they go fast.
Leave the dog at home if the rainforest is your priority. Dogs are not permitted on most park trails, including Hall of Mosses.
If you are never able to make it, I hope this painting gives you a small glimpse into the beauty of this place, even if it is just a sliver of one of the four ecosystems waiting for you there.
This place made me a better painter by showing me how much I still could not do. I am still trying. I think I will be trying for the rest of my life to capture the majesty of this living, breathing, dripping, ancient, impossibly green place.
Thank you, as always, for wandering with me.
— Jessie
