I hiked the West Elwha Trail to Altair Campground, then continued another 1.3 miles up the closed Olympic Hot Springs Road to the Glines Canyon Dam overlook. When I arrived at the trailhead at 8:45 a.m., about 20 elk were grazing in the forest by the trailhead. I'm told that this is common. When I drove out at the end of the day, the elk were in a meadow about a mile down Herrick Rd.
The trail was generally in good shape. There were three significant step-over or duck-under blowdowns. I cleared several smaller blowdowns.
Altair Campground is a nice spot for a lunch break. While it's no longer a campground, it still has a number of those big Park Service concrete picnic tables, along with a nice picnic shelter, and it has fine views of the river.
It's an easy walk up Olympic Hot Springs Rd. to the Glines Canyon Dam overlook, where there's an excellent interpretive display about the Elwha River restoration effort, and a fine view of the former Lake Mills valley that's now growing back into a natural river valley.
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