Hoh River Trail to Blue Glacier — Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2019

OK it is time for some truth-telling.

We hiked the Hoh River trail 8/5-8/9, camping at 5 Mile, Lewis, and Happy 4.

First off, this is a beautiful rainforest hike, and the first 5 miles or so get a lot of use by day trippers from the visitor center. There is a lot to see.

The rainforest is beautiful as you would find anywhere.

5 Mile and Happy 4 campsites are along the river. They’re both scenic, and the river water offers a good source for cooking and drinking water. But please know that it is glacial water – a bit silty – so be prepared to clean your filter often. 5 Mile has a (not very privy) privy and serviceable bear wire, but note that the NPS discourages use of bear wires and is promoting the use of bear cannisters which are a bit more reliable. Happy 4 did not seem to have either privy or a bear wire, perhaps explaining why it is less used.

We saw no bears or even bear sign, but did see multiple coyotes working the area. According to the rangers, they are reportedly very crafty and bold, and the moment your back is turned they’ll take whatever you have, food or clothing. No doubt the day trippers are inadvertently training them to see us hikers as good food sources! So please scare them away if you see them. We did, and they never bothered us after that.

Olympus Ranger Station seems a nice campsite, and is being re-shingled and new windows are being put in, so be advised that there are work crews there during the day. The side creek at the ranger station is a good source of clear drinking water.

Lewis campground, when we were there, had some issues. First, the deeper channel of the Hoh runs at the far side of the river bottom, so obtaining water requires a scramble across the gravel bar of about 10 minutes walking. Second, when we were at the Lewis site it was being used as the basecamp for the walk up to the Blue Glacier moraine by several large groups. I would estimate that there were perhaps 40-50 people camped there the night we stayed. One group in particular, packed in by Llamas, was quite loud and inconsiderate, and after camping one night in the meadow at the designated group site, decided it would be cooler to take several of the smaller individual sites closer to the river bed. These campsites at the (now dry) river bed are quite close together – one every 10 yards or so, and while many people were polite, a few seemed to not be aware of their effects on everyone else. We felt like we were at a frat party. It may be that this has become an ‘Instagram Trail,” as many people did not seem like the types we normally see backpacking.

Frankly the noise and crowding put us off so much that we abandoned our plans to go up the trail further.

Secondhand, we heard that there were queues to go up and down the ‘avalanche bridge’ between Martin’s creek and Glacier Meadows. With our experience and those images, we decided that this was not our type of trail/destination.