A Royal Difference in snow cover
So that’s what the small tarn in the upper Royal Basin looks like–and wow is it beautiful! Last week I returned to the Royal Basin in Olympic National Park. It had been 9 years since I had hiked to this rugged beautiful hanging valley in the northeast corner of the Olympics. In 2006 I made […]
Hiking among Paedomorphic and Neotonic critters—oh my!
Here are a couple of fifty cents words you can impress (or bore) your hiking friends with over your next post-adventure beer. I recently had an encounter with a paedomorphic critter. They are actually quite common in the Cascades and Olympics of Washington. Just what is paedomorphois? It’s a condition (sometimes referred to as neoteny) […]
The Hardest, Nastiest, Meanest Trail in the Olympics
What is wrong with me? What the heck was I thinking? I swore to myself back in July of 2006 never to ever do this trail again. I hated it. It was pure misery. I swore more times on it than I did watching (fill in your favorite team or politician) lose. It was back […]