Cats and Trails and Garden Tales
Musings on cats, travel, gardens and life
Olympic Mountains at Hurricane Ridge
I love having the Olympic Mountains as a backdrop to Seattle, but there’s nothing like being immersed in them at Hurricane Ridge. We spent a few days on the Olympic Peninsula earlier this week, a wilderness that includes Olympic National Park.
I found the map below on the waterfront in Port Angeles. Hurricane Ridge is a 45-minute drive into the heart of the mountains from the coastal town, but a world apart.
There are several hikes you can take at the top, we took the easiest, Cirque Ridge. Mountains on one side, sea on the other, this view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Canada to the north.
These tiny people went higher up onto Hurricane Hill.
We saved our legs for a different hike later that day at Marymere Falls, which I’ll share in a later post.
From the park newsletter, Bugler: “The story of the Olympic mountains began deep beneath the ocean, as the collision of two massive tectonic plates forged the landscape we admire today. Towering glacier-clad peaks like Mount Queets, Deception and Olympus rise dramatically from the lush, old-growth forests, separated from one another by river valleys.”
A couple days away does a body good.
~ Susanne
Cats and Trails and Garden Tales 
Gorgeous scenery. Another place we visited on our motorcycle. Incredible.
Yes, indeed! I bet it was amazing on a motorcycle!
It was!!
Very beautiful!! 😍❤️
Thank you! It’s an amazing place!
You’re welcome, have a great weekend. 😊
🤎🧡🤎
Gorgeous area, so glad it is protected as a NP.
Yes, I’m glad it’s protected. 🙂
Nice photos. You live in a beautiful area.
Thank you. I love having such wild beauty nearby.
Such a great area. You can ski in the winter and hike in the summer. So sad when the lodge burned down. Did they rebuild it?
No, they only have a temporary building. I miss that beautiful lodge. My mountain pictures looked better with the lodge in it!
It’s great for you to have those mountains so close to where you live. I would have to drive for almost 10 hours to Scotland to see anything remotely similar.
Best wishes, Pete.
Thanks, Pete. I love the Olympic Peninsula. It’s got everything: mountains, forests, rivers and ocean and just a couple hours away.
Beautiful mountain views! I loved Hurricane Ridge – not only for those wonderful views but also the air was so fresh and clear up there 😀 But we couldn’t do the walk we’d planned on as the path was partly covered in quite deep snow (in early July!) and we didn’t have the right footwear for that! But the lupines were gorgeous and so were the deer.
Thanks, Sarah. It really is a beautiful area along with the fresh mountain air!
At least the road was open for you. You never know what the snowpack will be. We only saw a couple patches of snow.
Majestic! 🤩
It’s an amazing place! 🤩
Wow! What a beautiful place. 👍🏻
Yes! I love the Olympic Peninsula, with the mountains, forest and ocean!
Been to Seattle. Must go to Olympic. ✌️
Yes, definitely worth a visit to Olympic National Park.
Stunning scenery, Susanne! We’re meeting up later this week to visit my cousin in Bellevue. Its too short of a trip to visit Olympic NP but its on my list. I love that map.
Thanks so much, Terri! I loved the map, too! Hopefully you’ll get a chance to visit another time, Shoulder seasons work great to avoid the crowds!
Beautiful scenes and sights
Thank you. 🙂