Enchanted Valley
Jul 20, 2003
- Type of Outing
- Day hike
- Read More in our Hiking Guide
- Hike: Enchanted Valley
- Region: Olympics -- West
- Avg Rating: 3.33
Wildlife bonanza! Brought my Dad and wife along for this one. We hiked from Graves Creek trailhead to Enchanted Valley on Friday, stayed in the Valley and dayhiked around Saturday and came out Sunday. Hot weather. Trail was in really good condition. No significant downed trees and trail was pretty dry. I think it's best to start this one early and take a couple nice breaks. It always seems longer than 13 miles to me. The Enchanted Valley was not crowded. The mosquitoes were not bad at all but the black flies (the biting kind) were pretty brutal. There are about 35 elk living in the valley right now. They are awesome to sit and quietly watch. They seemn really skiddish. We took a day hike on Saturday up towards Anderson Pass. Awesome views of the river basin and Mt. Anderson and the trail is really pleasant. We saw a pair of black bears right along the side of the trail. When we were hiking out on Sunday, we saw a bunch of more elk and two black bear sows and each had two very small cubs. The first one was about two miles out of the Enchanted Valley and the second one was closer to Oneil Creek. I was hiking a little ahead and kind of stumbled on the second one. She huffed at me and got a little annoyed with me. I was just too close. No problem though, I just backed away and gave her plenty of room. She sent the cubs up a tree and about five more minutes brought them back down and headed away from the trail towards a hill. It was absolutely awesome to see! In all, we saw about 35 elk (saw the same herd several times) and 9 bears. It was awesome. The rangers said we would have to ford the river at Pyrites Creek and right at the entrance of the valley. We didn't have to ford anything. There are great logs crossing the rivers at both places.... This trail is long but always well worth the haul.
Document Actions
- Email this page
- Print this
- Share
Forgot your
New user?
