Olympics in mid to late june

[Joshua Gilbert]

My best friend is coming out to washington in mid june, and we are planning on doing a backpacking trip to Olympic national park. I have figured out a route that I would like to try, but it might be a bit early for some of the passes.

Some years back I crossed the peninsula from the quinault river drainage, over anderson pass and hiked out the dosewallips trail. Now, I think I heard somewhere that the dosewallips road has been washed out for a couple of years, making me think that the dosewallips river valley is going to be pretty empty, and I was thinking about hiking in through the south unit of the buckhorn wilderness, over marmot and constance pass, back up over anderson pass into the enchanted valley, and then coming out on the quinault side.

I'm beginning to think mid to late june might be a bit to early for constance pass, so has anyone been out to the olympics this winter and taken a look at the snowpack, and has anyone tried a similar route at a similar time? I might have to go with something else or bring snowshoes, which I am loath to do at that time of year

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

The backside of Marmot Pass will have a pretty good snow field in June :-) Even in July it usually has one, and it is pretty steep.
Dosewallips is interesting, they replaced all the backcountry bridges by helicopter a couple years ago (two of them spanned canyons) so the trail is good, but yeah, not so many people out there these days due to the road.

[Joshua Gilbert]

Thanks for the info Sarah. I was out there like 10 years ago, and I remember they were replacing one of those bridges over a canyon back then. So when you say that the snowfield is steep, like iceaxes steep or like impassable steep?

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

Ice ax doable, it is on the side towards Tubal Cain. I was up there a couple years ago, and I just didn't like the run out, (we had come in Upper Dungness Trail and had been planning a loop out TC).

As for Dosewallips, they do have a trail in where the road was :-) It does seem that the Olympics didn't get hit as hard though as Rainier and the Cascades did during the 2 bad storms this winter.

[Joshua Gilbert]

I think I know exactly where it will be, I was up at tubal cain mine last summer, and there is a long steep meadow above the old ghost town, is that what you're talking about? I will have to do a scouting trip in early june to get the lay of the land.

Those storms did some major damadge on the western slopes of the cascades. My wife and I were snowshoeing up forest road 9030, talapus lake, just off I-90, and about two-hundered yards up the road, where a stream normally would have gone under a culvert, there was this wide creek where the road should have been, it looked like someone had used a bulldozer to decommision the road, logs thrown everywhere
pretty wild. I'm glad I wasn't there to see it happen.

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