Strange Occurrences in Olympic Wilderness // Seven Lakes Basin & High Divide
Вставка
- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- On July 30-31, Chloë and I completed the seven lakes basin and high divide loop in the Sol Duc area of Olympic National Park. This trip started waiting two hours for a ferry from Edmonds to Kingston, stopping in Port Angeles for some new shoes, a lovely drive along Lake Crescent, and a forgotten 'America the Beautiful' Pass at the Sol Duc ranger gate.
We started our trip at 5:30 PM on Friday 7/30 passing by many people on the way to Sol Duc falls, which is gorgeous. We started the classic Washington forest climb up to the alpine area. We passed by a comfortable deer, Deer Lake, and some awesome meadows on the way up to the other side of the Divide where we got our first views of Mount Olympus.
While walking up on this ridge, we started hearing what sounded like a barking dog. As we got closer, we confirmed it was a barking dog. We were confused because dogs are not allowed in ONP, especially not in this remote wilderness. It went on for a while and we worried that it could be with an injured human. With talks of a ranger being at our camp, I decided to descend down to Lunch Lake to see if a ranger was there and Chloë stayed to see if she could closer to the sound. We ended up finding neither a ranger nor a dog and thought it probably wasn't a great idea to split up. The dog stopped barking and we didn't hear it the morning again.
We were awoken by some rain drops at Lunch Lake and had to scramble to put the rain fly on. There were lots of mosquitoes waiting to greet us. We had some breakfast and went to explore more of the seven lakes. We peaked down at Clear Lake but decided to hike up to Mirror Lake, which feeds Lunch Lake. We took a lovely morning swim in here and were able to air dry in the warm air.
We decided to explore more of the small lakes/tairns beyond. This area just continues to offer more and more bodies of water. However, as we passed along the other side of Mirror Lake (the lake we had just swam in), we found a dead deer in the lake. Pretty weird and not sure how that happened. I have the picture if you're really curious.
We went back down to Lunch Lake, packed up camp and got going out of the Seven Lakes Basin up onto the High Divide. We encountered many trail runners doing the loop in a day. We ascended higher on the ridge until we ended up summitting Bogachiel Peak. Great views in all directions but when the wind stopped we were swarmed by mosquitoes. The rest of the ridge up on High Divide offers commanding views of Mount Olympus across the Hoh river valley as well as better views the other lakes in Seven Lakes Basin.
We started descending the ridge towards Sol Duc Park, but first decided to take another dip, this time in Heart Lake - aptly named. We continued our descent down through Sol Duc Park to the Sol Duc River where a long and flat 5 mile forest walk took us back to where we parked. An awesome, beautiful and strange trip!
Getting an overnight permit for Lunch Lake is tough and requires some advanced planning. If you want to do this one, start your planning the winter before your desired trip start.
Thank you for watching!
Ranger Chloe dispensing advice "don't undersell the backpack." Quite the animal adventures you two experienced; partying bloodthirsty mosquitos defying their bedtime, Mountain ducks who've lost their way, barking dog and deceased deer omens that you seemingly ignored..., sorry to have missed the fun! FYI, I think mosquito bites are preferable over cancer, but that's just one hikers opinion!
This is the best cliff notes you'll find for this video!
I'm curious how you confirmed what you heard was a barking dog, since you said you didn't find it.
Hi Joe - good point. We never did lay eyes on what was making the noise, so we couldn't confirm. It just sounded exactly like a barking dog. Happy to hear your ideas of what it could have been
@@bradleydosch8884 I have heard that Spotted Owls sometimes sound like a small dog. I heard that kind of noise once while in a remote part of Olympic National Forest, so who knows! Glad you had such a good trip...except for the bugs.
@@duckshaker That's some solid info. Appreciate it Joe - thank you for watching and engaging