Dosewallips River Road, West Fork Dosewallips River — Wednesday, May. 15, 2013

Olympic Peninsula > Hood Canal

Trail a little muddy in spots from rain we still get in May. With loaded multi-day packs, it took us a solid 3 hours to get to the ranger station campground - the trail is mostly uphill and part of that is steady steep while ascending. A big tree down which you can climb around near the falls. Camped overnight and went further in the next day to the fork. This part of the trail (past the initial ranger station campground) has quite a few more down trees and obstacles to climb over/under/around, but absolutely worth it. Saw some remains of deer on the trail (cougar?) and had some whiffs of non-human but no other big animal activity while we were there. Set of three deer came very close - fawns especially - within 5' of us talking. My guess is they've never been chased/spooked by humans and had no reason to run on sighting us - that was beautiful. We were there 2 nights and 3 days and only saw one other group of backpackers. Ranger station campground has bear boxes, pit toilet. The next campground has a bear wire. Took us 2:10 to get back down from the ranger station. Water from river totally drinkable (with proper filter). I didn't see many other people, but can imagine that it would be difficult with small children or older dogs.