Hoh River Trail

The Hoh River Trail is the primary artery into Olympic's legendary temperate rainforest, following the glacier-fed Hoh River 8.7 miles one-way to a basecamp at Glacier Meadows, where the Blue Glacier calves ice into a moraine lake at 4,200 feet. The lower valley receives 140 inches of precipitation annually, sustaining a canopy of Sitka spruce and bigleaf maple draped so heavily in club moss and licorice fern that individual limbs can support hundreds of pounds of epiphytes. Roosevelt elk are the dominant wildlife presence along the entire corridor — Olympic National Park holds the largest unmanaged Roosevelt elk herd in the world, and encounters within 30 feet are common. The trail transitions from lowland rainforest through silver fir forest to subalpine meadow in its upper miles, offering a compressed view of four distinct ecological zones. The Glacier Meadows camp sits directly below the 7,980-foot summit pyramid of Mount Olympus, whose climbing route begins nearby. Day hikers typically turn around at the 5-mile mark near the glacier-fed side channel, where the Hoh runs a milky gray from suspended glacial sediment.