Olympic Hot Springs — Sunday, Jan. 1, 2017

Olympic Peninsula > Northern Coast

Started this hike at the Elwha Valley/ Madison Falls Trailhead. Hiked the 10.5 up to Olympic Hot Springs Campground and the Springs themselves(another 1/4 mile each way). The Olympic Hot Sorings Road is CLOSED to vehicles. You have to hike the road for a good 8 miles before even getting to the trailhead for the springs. The road started out snow covered but packed, easy to navigate and not "breaking trail" for about 3.5 miles. Just passed the dam the road conditions take a turn for the worse. SNOW. EVERYWHERE. We ended up putting our snow shoes on at about mile 4. Had to break trail until the campground. 6 MILES OF BREAKING TRAIL DEATH. In the dark, in the snow. UGH. It took us about 6 hours total to get up there. Once at the trailhead we were able to take off our snow shoes as a bigger group had just come down. There are lots of stream crossing you have to jump or navigate across. SO MUCH SNOW. There were about 8 or so of these crossings. The steel bridges werent bad, but the suspension bridge was technically "closed" due to conditions. Once we made it to the campground we set up camp gulped down dinner and went to sleep. Woke up to frozen boots, socks, sleeping bag and pants. DOUBLE UGH. Couldnt find our extra socks. For the love of..... Once we woke up we ate breakfast and headed to the springs. The Log Bridge heading to the springs was TREACHEROUS. If you plan on doing this be EXTREMELY careful on this bridge. The hot spring we ended up in was pretty deep, and SO FREAKING WARM. SO WORTH IT. EVERYTHING WAS SO WORTH IT. Hopped out of the Hot Springs dried off quickly and put all our warm gear on. We were warm cleaning up our tent and packing up. Made it back down the trail and road in about 4 hours and 15 minutes. Boy are we sore. Lessons Learned: 1. Bring EXTRA extra socks 2. Conditioning beforehand would have been a good idea 3. Don't forget the french press at the trailhead 4. Figure out how to stop our clothes/boots and camelpak from freezing Not for the faint of heart. SO COLD.

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