Enchanted Valley via East Fork Quinault River — Sunday, May. 13, 2018

This trail was wild and made for a wonderful weekend. Thank you to a previous trip reporter for submitting because their photo of a bear got my attention and inspired this hike. The last bit of the road from Quinault to the trailhead is dirt but well graded. It is passable by all vehicles but I will say that when I returned from my overnight on Monday, I had a flat and had to change it (it was tough to remain patient when all I wanted to do was get off my feet and find food but thanks to my friend and another hiker, we got it changed without too many issues.) The trail is stunning and in good shape. The only spot that was a bit tricky was the last 400 feet when we wanted to cross from the trail over to the chalet and campground. The trail disappeared and we had to make our own way over logs and braids of the river. Perhaps we were too eager to get to the chalet and to camp however and didn’t hike far enough on. I saw one bear, tons of elk, two snakes, and a grouse that did it’s mating call right on top of a log only about 20 ft away from me!! The trees are large and everything is bright green. I would love to do it again but I definitely would not go to the enchanted valley in one night and back. My muscles are paying for it now and I wished I had made this into a three day trip.