In 1999, the snow was lying deeper than Time up on the passes and divides, and hikers wouldn't get to some of those places until September, or maybe not at all. It's not a bad thing that we get acquainted with rivers.
We picked the Gray Wolf off the map by the following, scientific method. We looked at all the places in the Olympics that were well known, even legendary-- the Hoh, the Quinault, Staircase, Sol Duc-- and then looked for a point furthest away from all of them. We found the NE corner of the park.
I had to get out of town, anyway. I was about to suffer the ignominy of my essentially unfathomable 50th birthday. People knew about it, so it was time to skip town. I thought about the upcoming birthday and imagined that I was being covered up by flake after flake of white snow. Did I mention that it's not a bad thing to become acquainted with rivers?
Yet even the Gray Wolf couldn't quite forget the snow. It was in a frenetic rampage of snowmelt and gravity. Karin and I could not hear what each other said from a few feet away-- the river was that loud. What blasting and power-- we stood by and looked at the runoff-result of mountains, weather, and wilderness melted down to a barrage of ranting river.
| At 50, you walk a
beautiful,
narrow bridge above the waters. |
I once looked up "river" in a rather strange book called The Dictionary of Symbols. I believe it said that the river is a paradoxical symbol-- always flowing, nurturing, and permanent, yet always running away, disappearing around the bend, transient. There's a lot to think about here, but on this occasion the Gray Wolf was just busy storming out of the mountains. All the fords were unfordable. If you got in the river's way it would knock you down-- no particular paradox in that!
It wasn't easy to get there. The main entry, the Palo Alto Road, was closed by three slides. We had to take the Taylor Cutoff Road west of Sequim and then FS road 2870. The lower Gray Wolf Trail was itself closed by several slides in the first two miles, but we were able to get in via a mosquito-ridden, detour trail which takes off a mile before the official trailhead on road 2870. We carried Custom Correct map "Gray Wolf--Dosewallips."
This hike is distinguished by it's very nice, river-side campsites. There are fine camps at Two Mile Camp, Cliff Camp, after the bridge beyond Cliff Camp, and at Gray Wolf Camp at the confluence of the Gray Wolf River and Cameron Creek. The camp at Camp Tony is a little dreary, but hikers can walk down to the river where the trail from Slab Camp arrives on the opposite bank and find an excellent site. Slide Camp, beyond Camp Tony is also a little dark and gloomy.
We also found one spectacular campsite that I don't even want to talk about. But I might reveal it to anyone who e-mails me and explains in a very pithy and witty manner why they deserve to possess this unsurpassed knowledge. Maybe.
The Gray Wolf Trail also passes through beautiful stands of timber. They call this area the "Rainshadow" because of its lack of precipitaion. I can only think that this distinction is in contrast with other parts of the Olympic Peninsula which probably receive more rain than anywhere else in the country, with the possible exception of some obscure weather station in Southeastern Alaska. You can't make forests like this without plenty of rain.
The chances for solitude are excellent on the Gray Wolf. We saw no other backpackers and no other campers over a weekend in the middle of the summer. It gave me plenty of time to think about my 1/2 century of interesting existence in which the hunger to hike unhiked trails has barely slowed below a feverish stampede, and during which the river has gone about its paradoxical business in its own noisy, riverish way.
