Hoh River Trail to Elk Lake, Hoh River Trail to Blue Glacier — Sunday, Aug. 11, 2019

I have been to the Hoh rainforest before but this was my first time hiking the full trail all 18+ miles of it - all the way till the Blue glacier lateral moraine.

The trail is mostly flat upto the 12.4 mile camp, beyond which some serious elevation gain begins to Elk Lake and beyond.

We camped overnight at Elk lake the first night. It was a long 15+ mile hike but we took it easy.

The first 9.1 miles upto Olympus Guard station took us around 3.5 hours - this is where we took a break for lunch for about half an hour. From there the last 6 miles to Elk lake took an additional 3.5 hours - because it was much steeper - especially towards the end after you cross the Hoh river high bridge.

On the second day we left Elk lake camp at around 10 am and reached the glacier lateral moraine at around 1pm. It was only 3.5 miles or so, but 2700ft elevation gain and the major obstacle was the washout zone with rope and ladder just before glacier meadows campground. (More on the ladder below)

After glacier meadows you come out into open meadows and then go up a rocky and steep slope (trail easy to find) all the way to the top of the lateral moraine (at the turn off for terminal moraine we kept on going straight towards lateral moraine). The views from the top of the moraine are spectacular. Blue glacier is the most amazingly spectacular glacier I have ever seen outside of Alaska. The up-close views of the peak of Mount Olympus was also very impressive. We got lucky with the weather - it was a cloudy / rainy day in general - but as we got to the top - the clouds actually cleared up and even the sun came out for a while ! This was so worth the 37 mile round trip hike, rope ladder etc.

You can continue along a faint trail that goes along  the ridge line of the lateral moraine up to a point where there are some nice flat rocks to sit and appreciate the views from. there is a rock with a metal bar - possibly remnants of some signage that used to exist there.

On the way back we decided to skip terminal moraine trail since we figured that we had reached a upper viewpoint with better views anyway. That night we had to go back to the Olympus guard station for camping overnight before heading out the following day back to the trail head. 

More on The Rope Ladder Washout :

I am covering this topic in more detail since I was personally quite anxious about going through this stretch after reading previous trip reports (I am afraid of heights in general)..

The first impression of the rope ladder is a little scary - since you are looking down about 100 ft or so inside the washout zone standing at the top of it - and you realize that the ladder rungs are missing for the first 20ft or so - where the rope is your only support down the sketchy looking slope ! However, once you get hold of the rope and step into the slope you realize that it is not bad at all - the rope is a pretty solid climbing rope and wearing gloves - there was no chance of any slippage - even the slope was fine to walk on - loose dirt and rocks - but as long as you keep your hands on the rope you would feel just fine. Most importantly - you go both down and up facing the slope - so you do not need to look down much. It is actually possible to not use the ladder at all and just use the rope to rappel down !

Once you reach the ladder rungs you can go sideways to get your footing on the ladder - that way you gain even more stability. Once on the ladder it is theoretically possible to use the ladder only with your hands and legs, but I felt much better by hanging on to the rope and stepping down the ladder. You might need to yank the rope towards the ladder since it is aligned towards the right of the ladder during your initial descent. Towards the bottom of the slope where the ladder abruptly ends you would need to switch over to a different rope and go down a smaller slope to the right - which is only 20-25 feet - not bad at all. Overall, the rope ladder experience is actually quite fun - but do keep in mind that if there are other people ahead of you - there will be a wait time since it is one at a time on the rope (to prevent a person above you launching loose rocks that come down towards you!). In our case we had 6 people ahead of us both while going down and up - and it turned out to be almost a half hour wait to get on the ladder !