Olympic Peninsula Vacation, Part 3: The horse smells the beer

On Monday, we embarked on one of the classic hikes in the Sol Duc area, going from our campground to Sol Duc Falls, and continuing from the falls on up to Deer Lake. We originally intended to hike a nearly twelve-mile loop, going on past Deer Lake along the Little Divide ridge to Mink Lake, and from there back down to the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort for a post-hike soak. However, the people we met on our way up to Deer Lake, including several young summer park rangers, told us that there was still so much snow on Little Divide that it was possible to lose the trail. So we ended up just going to Deer Lake and back, which was plenty of hiking anyway: a total of ten miles round trip, with an elevation gain of 1,900 feet.

The first leg, to Sol Duc Falls, was an easy two miles with just a couple of hundred feet of elevation gain. The falls aren't very high, but they were surging with snowmelt.

From there, we started climbing the three miles to Deer Lake. Three miles doesn't sound very far, but it was pretty steep. There was also water everywhere; in some places the trail itself resembled a shallow creekbed — I don't mean shallow creeks crossed the trail, though they did that too; I mean portions of the trail were shallow creeks. Here's a video David took of water falling from an overhang next to the trail.

So much water in July! One would never expect to see that in the Sierra Nevada.

Nor this: Snow on the shores of a lake at just under 4000 feet of elevation. This is Deer Lake, and David observing the signpost of the trail we would have taken from here to Mink Lake if it hadn't been for the snow.

Halfway through the trip back down to Sol Duc Falls, my legs were already aching. I started going as fast as I could, partly because I was worried I might not make it, partly because I wanted to make sure we got back down in time to get to the hot springs before they closed, and partly because I was thinking about the beer we had in the cooler back at the campsite. Whatever works: we made it back to camp at 7:00 pm, an eight-hour hike behind us and with two hours left to hit the hot springs.

Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort has three pools for soaking — one gently warm pool for kids and two that are progressively hotter, plus a naturally-heated swimming pool. They drop the price from $11 to $8 for the last two hours of the day, which worked out perfectly for us. It felt so good to shake my legs out in the hot water, soak my throbbing feet, and tread water in the cool pool. As evening fell, thousands of big water bugs hovered over the pools — ugly but harmless. The sulfur fumes from the mineral springs seemed to be keeping the mosquitoes away.

On Tuesday we headed back to Seattle, with a stop in Port Angeles for lunch at a Chinese restaurant, then back to Bainbridge Island to catch the ferryboat Tacoma again. My travels weren't over when I got home, however; I had to turn around and head to Minneapolis the next day for work! Fortunately, I had my hike-weary legs to remind me of what a great trip I'd just had on the Olympic Peninsula.