Spent labor day weekend on a leisurely tour of seven lakes basin.
First, a note about the picking up permits: seeing as we weren't in any rush the first day, we arrived at the Port Angeles WIC around 11: big mistake. It took over an hour to pick up our permit (despite the fact that we've had this reservation for months). I'll chalk it up to fact it was labor day weekend but the fact that non-reservation people were in the same line as those with reservations meant that many people in line were going through the entire process of making a recreagion.gov account, seeing what was available, and then making a decision with a ranger holding their hand through the process. It wasn't particularly efficient.
On to the actual trail report. Here are the important features:
- So many bears. We counted at least a dozen individual bears across our 3 day trip. The closest encounters involved one bear that was being urged down the high divide trail by hikers coming from the opposite direction. We tried to stay nice and far back so the bear never felt cornered: after if caught sight of us, it turned off the trail and headed down into the seven lakes basin. The second encounter was a bit more nervy: early morning on the trail up from hoh lake we encountered a mother and its cub just uphill from the trail. The pair seemed more reluctant to leave the area and so we had to pass with more caution. We were probably only about 40-50 feet away.
- Blueberries everywhere! You could easily spend hours just grazing along the trail. This also likely explains the bears.
- Each day seemed to get cloudier in the afternoon so arriving early might be key, especially if you want to catch views from the high divide south across the hoh valley and towards Mt Olympus.
- The trail is wet and muddy in some places at lower elevations. Also the high divide trail just west of the turnoff towards lunch lake has some fissures tearing up the area including the trail: It's best to take a bit extra time to avoid injury.
- When we were hiking out Monday, we saw a parade of emergency services running/walking quickly towards sol duc falls. They must have done a fantastic job because when looking at an article (pretty sure the article was about the same incident) it was mentioned nobody was seriously injured. Big thanks to them for continuing to save our stupid butts.
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