Hoh Rain Forest

One of our first "trips" when we moved to Seattle in 1984 was to visit the Olympic National Park. When we told people we were moving to Seattle their immediately reaction was, "why in the world would you want to do that? It rains 360 days a year there!" That was a bit of an exaggeration because summers in Seattle are as good and beautiful as anyplace in the world. But as for the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park, 360 days of rain is not far off. The Hoh gets an average of 140 to 170 inches of rain per year. That's a lot of water. Of course, Mount Rainer, in 1998/99 got 1032.5 inches of snow. That's over 86 feet of snow that fell that winter. It was a record for Mount Rainer. May have been a record for the lower 48 as well.

But, back to the Hoh for now. The result of 12 to 14 feet of rain is a lush, green canopy of both coniferous and deciduous plants/tress. Mosses and ferns blanket both the ground and lower portions of the trees. The Hoh is one of the finest remaining examples of temperate rainforest in the United States. 

When we first arrived at the Hoh in 1984, there was a small dirt parking lot and we had the place all to ourselves. I think maybe there might have been one or two other couples hiking the Hoh. We visited again about 15 years later and found a huge paved parking lot with ten buses and 50 cars. We didn't stay long that time.

Here is one of the few photos I have left of the Hoh Rain Forest:

The Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic National Park, Washington

A true landscape photographer or macro photographer would be in heaven in the Hoh. Looks like something out of Harry Potter.