Free Flow

Washington’s Olympic Peninsula does get twelve to fourteen feet of rain a year. Its Hoh Rainforest is considered the quietest place in the United States. No road directly crosses the peninsula, and ninety-five percent of Olympic National Park is wilderness, one of the largest such parcels in the Lower 48. But still—as we hitchhiked, hiked, skied, paddled, and portaged our way from the rainforest to the ocean, we found the terrain even harder and more raw than our team of three had imagined. That a place this wild could be just forty miles from a city the size of Seattle blew our minds.

Our plan was to hitchhike to the Hoh, summit and ski Mount Olympus, traverse to the headwaters of the Elwha River, then paddle the Elwha from its trickling beginnings to the salty sea—something that could only be attempted since 2014, when the second of two dams was removed, completing the largest removal in US history. This would be a rare opportunity