Sunrise Ridge

This hike is well described in Craig Romano's book, "DayHiking Olympic Peninsula". The trail begins on the High Ridge Nature Trail at Hurricane Ridge. At 0.3 miles reach a junction and go right on the Mt Angeles Trail dropping 250 feet. The trail then begins a gradual climb through beautiful wildflower meadows with Mt Angeles appearing larger as you continue along the trail.360 degree views include the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Vancouver Island, San Juan Islands, Mt Baker, and Hurricane Ridge area with Mt Olympus the dominant peak. The trail descends at about 2 miles and at this point there is some easily crossed snow on the trail. The trail now goes a short distance through groves of subalpine fir where Jacob's ladder, lupine, arnica and tiger lilies were blooming. The trail soon opens up again and at 2.6 miles you reach the base of Mt Angeles where 2 unmarked climber paths appear. The left one appeared to be marked off. We continued another 0.5 mile to the junction with the Switchback Trail. Here we turned around for a total of 6.1 miles. We did do the 0.1 trail to Sunrise Point on our return. From here we saw a bear in the meadow below the ski lift. This may have been the bear we watched walk up the hill to the Sunrise Point Ridge as we were nearing the junction on our return. Other wildflowers seen were mountain owl clover, various shades of orange and red paintbrush, a few yellow paintbrush, escalloped onions, harebells, larkspur, and many others I either forgot or couldn't identify! A fawn, doe and buck were seen at the junction with the Sunrise Point trail.