An elk bull strains to reach foliage on the Hall of Mosses Trail in the Hoh Rainforest.
Tag Archives: Olympic National Park
Velvet
Since it was late September, I was surprised to see the antlers of these two young males still covered in velvet, the skin and blood vessels that supply nutrients to the antlers as the grow anew each year (the fine hairs give rise to the velvet name). Both were part of the same elk herd as the older bull in the previous post.
The dominant bull was an even older bull with a full rack of antlers on his head, I was also surprised to see him let the younger males in the herd, mixing in with the females of his harem. I did see a couple of older bulls half-heartedly sparring elsewhere in the rainforest, but all of the males here were getting along just fine.
I love the bugling call of the bulls during the rut so I was sorry I only heard the calls once in Mount Rainier and not at all in the Olympics. The rut would have been winding down this time of year in Wyoming, but I must have missed the prime time for Washington.
Roosevelt
The race of elk we have in the Pacific Northwest are known as Roosevelt elk, which I believe are named for Theodore Roosevelt in honor of his early push to protect them. I came across this bull, part of a larger herd, on a rainy morning near the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park.
While President Cleveland protected some of the forests of the Olympic Peninsula in 1897 by declaring an Olympic Forest Reserve, the protection did not extend to the elk who lived there and in a few years less than 2,000 survived. President Roosevelt (Theodore, not Franklin) established the Mount Olympus National Monument in 1909 to protect the elk, but future politicians cut back the acreage to half of its original size.
President Roosevelt (Franklin, not Theodore) granted National Park status in 1938 after visiting the area, the status it has retained to the current day, protecting not only the elk that bear the Roosevelt name but also the many plants and animals that are unique to the Olympic Peninsula.
You can find more info about the park at the official park site and in a PDF on the history of its park status.
Forks
This fall I stayed a couple of nights in the little town of Forks while hiking in the Quinalt and Hoh Rainforests. On my drive into town, I kept seeing signs like “Welcome Twilight Fans” but I didn’t know what Twilight was. When I checked into the hotel, the friendly woman behind the desk clued me into the wildly popular books.
I had a great time hiking in the rainforests with lovely scenes like these moss-draped trees in the Quinalt, so I decided to read the first book in the series even though I’m not exactly the target demographic — I am not now, nor have I ever been, a teenage girl.
Speaking of books, the other day I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep so I continued reading Fellowship of the Ring where I last left off. It was a cold morning and my electric blanket had turned itself off, so I basked in the toasty warmth of a Balrog.
Wet Greens
With melting snow and approaching rain, I shoveled out a channel along the side of our street in Portland so all of that water would have some place to go. I know from past experience with fallen leaves that if the area beside our driveway isn’t completely clear we end up with a little lake where the driveway meets the road.
The Hoh River in Olympic National Park is also fed by melting snow, but this snow is from glaciers high in the Olympic range that grind rocks into silt that color the runoff a milky blue. I suspect this little stream running through the Hall of Mosses Trail is spring fed, as unlike the Hoh its clear waters showed the brilliant green plants that were swaying in the gentle current.