You can easily drive to Deer Park via a snaking gravel road from Port Angeles. So why hike this somewhat steep trail? Here are five good reasons. One: access to Deer Park, since the road is often closed until July. Two: wildflowers that grow along this trail in profusion, both in numbers and varieties. Three: absolute solitude for most of the way. Four: spectacular views of the entire Grey Wolf River valley and its towering peaks. And five: you'll earn it all, something you simply can't do from the seat of your SUV.

This lightly used but well-defined trail starts out gentle enough through a dry forest of Douglas-fir, layered with rhododendrons and carpeted by salal and kinnikinnick. At 1.5 miles reach an unmarked junction with a "short-cut"trail that leads 0.5 mile back to the road (about 1.6 miles from Slab Camp). The easy strolling ends as the way steepens. Pass a spring and consider topping off your water bottle. This is the only water along the trail after the snows melt. At about 2.75 miles reach an open rib and your first breathtaking views of the Gray Wolf Valley. A bench has been placed here in memory of longtime trail volunteer and Sequim resident Phil Hall. It is indeed a great place to be honored.

Now, through open forest and dry rocky slopes, the trail reaches higher. At 3.6 miles enter Olympic National Park. The next 1.6 miles of trail travel through some of the most scenic hiking terrain in this corner of the Olympics. Through parklands, meadows, and basalt outcroppings, the trail weaves its way to Deer Park, delivering breathtaking views at every bend in its course. Gaze out to barren Baldy and Gray Wolf Peak. Admire the jagged summits of Mounts Walkinshaw, Clark, Deception, and Mystery, some of the loftiest summits on the Olympic Peninsula.

Peer down into the emerald valleys of the Gray Wolf River and of Grand and Cameron Creeks to some of the largest concentrations of old-growth forests in western Washington. And at your feet? Flowers! Find arnica, phlox, pearly everlasting, stonecrop, chocolate lily, paintbrush, columbine, yellow violet, wallflower, buttercup, cinquefoil, rockslide larkspur, and many more.

At 5.2 miles you'll come to a junction with the Three Forks Trail at the Deer Park Campground, high on a grassy shoulder of Blue Mountain. If you're there before the road opens it'll just be you and the deer enjoying the scenery.