Olympic: The Incredible Wilderness (1973)

In the wilderness wonderland of the Olympic Peninsula, nature's elemental forces have fashioned incredible contrasts. Barren windswept mountain peaks capped with snow. Lush rainforest valleys green and cathedral quiet. Alpine meadows filled with flowers. Rocky headlands and treecloaked shores, placid glacier carved lakes, turbulent glacial streams, and always the restless surf dotting the wild coast with its small island carvings, the sea stacks. Nature has carpeted the alpine meadows with color, supplied wildlife and profusion, and almost 1,400 square miles of this beauty is available for your enjoyment in Olympic National Park. Distances are not vast, but you could spend weeks hiking, camping, and looking and not see it all. You can spend a day or two with a car and on foot and sample a host of its [Music] wonders. Olympic National Park headquarters is in the town of Port Angeles on the north edge of the park. From Port Angeles, Route 101 loops the park on three sides and leads into the park at Lake Crescent and Claylock. No roads cross the heart of the park, but two spur roads lead to mountain tops and several more provide access to mountain valleys and to the coast. Hurricane Ridge is only 17 m through virgin forests of fur and hemlock. You can stop at parking turnouts along the way for sites like this, the summit of Mount Angeles. With field glasses, you may be able to find a mountain goat climbing the sheer rock face with his specially adapted hooves. Your first view of the High Olympics will be from the road along the crest of Hurricane Ridge. From the lodge and beyond the nearer Bailey Range, the summit peaks of Mount Olympus are visible and the top of the famous Blue Glacier ice fall. Visitors gather on the lodge terrace while park naturalists describe the varied features of the scene spread before them. There is a marvel of changing colors as the growing season progresses from June to September. Indian paintbrush, Colombia liies, wild cousins of the domesticated tiger lily, long blooming hair bell. Sitka Coline and the Flat Violet. Take the 9-mile drive out along Hurricane Ridge to Obstruction Point for more views of the mountains and the meadows. Those snow banks aren't thick enough to flow as glaciers, but they are here year round. Marmmets are common here. This variety is peculiar to the Olympics. [Music] Chipmunks abound in the area, too. And the blacktailed deer range from the mountains to the sea, as do black bears. Bears may be seen from Obstruction Point Road, enjoying the comfort of snow banks like this one. Remember, bears are wild and sometimes dangerous. For your own safety, observe sensible precautions. [Music] Lake Crescent is a crystal blue low country lake. Its basin formed thousands of years ago by a lobe of the same glacier that shaped Wandafuca Strait, Puget Sound, and Hood Canal and almost made the Olympic Mountains an island in ice. Route 101 hugs the southshore of Lake Crescent for its entire length. A visitor center and nature trail invite a worthwhile pause in your journey along the lake [Applause] [Music] [Applause] shore. This is one of the last remaining primitive beaches along the Pacific coast. The eyelets or sea stacks as they're called are evidence of the ceaseless struggle between sea and land. Wave action is still changing this coast. And here on Second Beach, reached from the parking area by a short wooded trail, a park naturalist shows visitors the changing yet changeless [Music] scene. Out on a rocky reef at low tide, we find a variety of marine life. The beachwalk lasts about an hour and a half. [Applause] [Music] The Hoe is typical of the four large oceanfacing valleys on the western side of the park. The forest rises in stories above the road, the tallest reaching nearly 300 ft. Sitka spruce, Douglas fur, and western hemlock contrast with a lower story of maples and cottonwoods. This forest provides a home for herds of stately Olympic [Music] elk. The river fed by glaciers is usually blue or on cold days crystal clear. On rare hot days it can be turbulent, swollen by water from melting ice and opaque with rock powder ground by the glaciers inching down Mount Olympus. Deep in the valley, follow a path to the visitors center tucked back in the forest. After the visitors center, go for a walk along the rainforest nature trails. Rainforests are usually tropical, characterized by a yearly rainfall of at least 80 in. Here we have as much as 140, the wetest winter climate in the contiguous United States. This grove of big leaf maples is called the Hall of Mosses. Moss-like plants drape gracefully from the trees with a variety of ferns and other plants actually rooted in them and nourished by airborne soil particles and moisture absorbed by the plants themselves. Sunlight dances and sparkles on the springfed streams, cool and clear, that wander through the forest. And this being a rainforest, you may see some rain, [Music] too. Most of it falls in the winter, but occasionally during the summer, clouds drift through the mountains, bringing showers. Again, follow Route 101, moving south past the inland rainforest valleys and mountains to the southern seashore area where the road runs near the coast through the park from Ruby Beach to Claylock. The gulls greet us, the surf exhilarates us, and we find a vacant drift log at a beach camper's gathering to hear a park naturalist talk about our seashore heritage on the Olympic Peninsula. A very busy day if you can spare only one. But you can visit all these places we've shown you easily and leisurely in a day and a half or two. The high country of Hurricane Ridge with its alpine charm and breathtaking vistas of the peninsula's mountainous center crowned by the peaks of Mount Olympus. The low country around lovely Lake Crescent. The whole rainforest valley fanning out with its companions from mountains toward the sea. And the seashore itself, wild and rugged.