Hoh River Trail to Blue Glacier — Friday, Apr. 29, 2016

Olympic Peninsula > Pacific Coast

We went for a 3 day backpacking trip hoping to make it to blue glacier. It was a beautiful hike with views throughout the trail. Once we passed the last campgrounds before glacier Meadows, we started hitting a few patches of snow but it wasn't too difficult to cross. There were quite a few bridges out so we had to find alternative ways across many of the streams. We did the bulk of the miles - 19 - on Saturday and made it to the rope ladder. There had been a washout and the ladder was suspended several feet above the ground and from there, we were unable to determine where the trail picked back up again after depending the ladder due to heavier snow. We had called ahead and were told the snow line was much higher than it was, so we decided to turn back there and make our way back down as we hadn't brought any gear for snow. The trail had only been cleared a little ways past five mile so there were a quite few obstacles but overall it was fairly easy to travel. Absolutely beautiful views. We plan to take a glacier course and come back again when we can make it to and onto the glacier! This was my first backpacking trip ever and I survived almost the entire trail in 3 days.