Excellent introduction to Olympic National Park! This was my first real trek into Olympic National Park and I was thoroughly impressed.
This particular hike does not seem to get the attention its beauty would suggest. Its actually one of the closer hikes to Seattle in the Olympics and is fairly easy to access (the 10 or so miles down gravel road can probably be done by most cars, I certainly felt like my large 4x4 SUV was overkill). While the distance for a day hike is on the longer end (16+ miles) the elevation gain is moderate (especially by WA standards - we clocked 3,300 ft elevation gain). The scenery changes drastically over the course of the hike and keeps you entertained despite its length.
We did this hike in a day starting at about 9am and finishing around 5pm with plenty of breaks, photo ops, and exploring along the way. The weather was phenomenal for this late in the season. No snow on the trail. Some mud but easy to circumnavigate. Minimal, and avoidable, icy spots. The end of the trail is a bit dicey (we went to the upper basin which is the best part in my opinion), but not something you can't do with a little care and experience.
There are several camp sites along the way before leaving the national forest for the national park which I presume are free to use without reservation or wilderness permit. Forest permit or National Parks pass is required at trail head FYI. Once you end the National Park, wilderness camping reservations are required as well as proper food storage (bear canisters I believe as I did not see any established bear hangs or food bins at the campgrounds). There are at least two campgrounds in the park that we saw which both appears well maintained and attractively located.
The trail itself seems super well maintained. Very recent trail maintenance was evident by the fresh sawdust and newly cut fallen trees across the path. signage is clear enough you could probably make it without a GPS or map though I would not recommend that. There is a privy at the Royal Lake campground (Didn't see any others but there may be).
Upper Royal Basin where the light blue tarns reside is worthy of an entire day of exploring. We spend a couple hours there and felt like we hadn't seen half of what we wanted to. The weather was overcast but didn't rain or snow at all and temperatures were surprisingly warm in the basin. Does anyone know why this is? We felt a warm almost summery breeze as we entered the basin compare to the forest despite being overcast and mid November.
Overall one of my new favorite hikes in Washington and 10/10 would recommend. No dogs I hear which is fair in my opinion seeing as how many people are irresponsible with their animals in the wilderness and we don't have the resources to patrol every trail all the time. The only other person we came across was a hunter leaving the national forest as the sunset but we did see about three other cars at the trail head when we started and based on footprints believe one other person made it to the basin that day. There are many other trails that start from the same spot as well.
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