Lake Quinault, the Hoh Rain Forest

October, 2020

When most people hear the words “rain forest”, I bet they picture a tropical rain forest, a jungle, hot and humid. But there are rain forests in the world (like the Hoh) that are in temperate climates, cool (though still humid), with evergreen trees and other northern forest plants literally dripping with water and moss from the amazing amount of rainfall and the moisture that’s held in the air. These northern rain forests are definitely rain forests. This rain forest, the Hoh, is the wettest forest in the entire lower 48 states of the USA, including Florida’s Everglades or any other forest/area you might think about. The Hoh is wet!

The Olympic Mountain range stops almost all rain clouds in their tracks, at least all the clouds that are heading towards these particular mountains. The rain clouds come in from the west, off the Pacific Ocean. They are heading east. But the Olympic Mountains put a halt to that movement. The clouds then rise up the sides of the mountains until the atmospheric pressure and air temperature are such that the clouds unload bazillions of gallons (that’s an estimate) of water onto the land that’s just west of the tip top of the Olympic Mountains … a whole lot of that water is dumped onto the Hoh River valley … to the tune of about 12 feet of rain every year. Compare that amount of annual rainfall, 12 feet, with an annual rainfall of a mere 15 inches (inches!) in the town of Sequim, which is in the “sunshine shadow” of the Olympic Mountains and is just a few miles from the Hoh River. The Olympic Mountains dictate the weather hereabouts! If you want sun, go to Sequim … if you want a gorgeous rain forest, go up the Hoh.

With those little details in mind, let’s get into this rain forest and see what we can see. After parking and then checking out the Visitor Center, we walked the Spruce Nature Trail, just that one trail. That one trail took us more than three hours to complete since we kept stopping to look and wonder. There’s so much to see here.

 

I took about 250 photos during our day here, during the walk on just that one trail. I’ll reduce the number of photos as much as possible so you can still see the highlights … but there were so many highlights! Please enlarge the photos here so you get the full effect of this amazing forest.

The photo below is our first view into the rain forest. Look at that moss on just this one branch.

We walked out onto that footbridge and stopped in the middle and looked to see if there was any water under the bridge or not. We were here in October so we figured any waterway would be dried up by this time of year. Wow were we wrong! Look at this …

 

It was really wet here. There was moss on pretty much every tree, every branch, and even on some of the smaller plants. Keep in mind that moss doesn’t hurt trees or other plants. Moss is not like ivy or other sorts of plants that drain or kill the host tree/plant. In fact, moss catches water and minerals from the rain and helps feed the trees. Although, the added weight of that water from all of that luxuriant moss can sometimes break branches. But overall, the moss helps keep trees healthy.

At first I thought the interesting item that’s on the surface of the water in the photo above was some sort of bug, but it didn’t move unless the water moved. What the heck is it??

 

 

 

We were so busy concentrating on the water around us, and on the moss, that we were a bit stunned when we finally looked up, to the treetops, way up! Info at the Visitor Center said that many of the trees in the rain forest are over 200 feet tall.

 

 

There were many, many nurse logs in the forest. The one in the photo below looked to me like a long creepy, crawly thing with bones sticking out all along its body and with antenna on its head.

When we looked more closely at the head area (below) we could see water dripping from the dark, rich green moss. It hadn’t rained here in several days, and yet, still, water was dripping, the wood was wet, the ground was wet.

Maybe the moss didn’t hurt trees, but the tree below looked like it was host to some sort of birds or other critters. It was the only tree that we noticed with these holes in it.

 

The path was definitely not ADA/wheelchair accessible. Sometimes I swear those roots moved as if to grab an unwary traveler’s foot.

 

 

Look at how the tree above sits up in the air.

I think there must have been a nurse log or a tree stump under the tree years ago, but that nurse log or stump has long since rotted away.

 

Snakes in the path! 🙂

Above, a tree that fell relatively recently, that will become a nurse log.

What a face!!

I didn’t see the woodpecker below. I had walked almost past it but then heard it. It didn’t seem to care that we were there. It just kept chipping away at the fallen tree, looking for a snack.

 

What kind of tree is this?

 

 

 

We came around a corner in the path (above) and I swear that “root” looked like a lizard scrabbling along the path. Yikes.

 

The sign below describes the group of trees in the photo above. Read the sign and you’ll see why the trees in the photo above look like a whole bunch of trees clumped very tightly together.

And shortly after that interesting group of trees all tightly clumped together, we came upon this row of trees below. I couldn’t get a good photo to show that the trees really were in an almost perfect row, as if they had been planted that way. But believe me, they were in an absolutely straight line with each other. How could that be?

 

In the photo below, you can still see some of the nurse log that remains under the trees. These trees are huge. They started life from that nurse log a very long time ago.

Ah, and then we found ourselves back at the beginning of our walk. It hadn’t seemed like three hours since we started on the walk.

What a beautiful place. There is so much to see here, and so much to learn. This forest is so special. It smelled so good! The smell wasn’t at all like nasty rotting wood or a soggy swamp smell that you might expect. It had a rich, damp, green, healthy smell … kind of a mix between healthy decay and fresh new growth. And, of course, all of the different colors and textures of the plants and the moss made this a remarkable place to spend a good deal of time. If you ever come here, to the Hoh Rain Forest, plan on plenty of time to soak it in.

On my next visit, I’ll choose one of the other trails to explore.

So … why is it called “Hoh Rain Forest”? Well, this rain forest is immediately adjacent to the Hoh River. The word “Hoh” comes from Native American languages, possibly from the Quileute word “Ohalet” which means “fast moving water” or “snow water”, which sounds reasonable since the Hoh River is large and fast. It forms from glacial runoff way back up in the Olympic Mountains. On the other hand, this website about the Hoh people says the word “hoh” comes from the Quinault word “hox”, although it doesn’t report what the word “hox” means.

If you want more information about the Hoh Rain Forest, the visitor’s center, the campground up there, hiking trails, etc, take a look at this website.

After our visit here, my friend and I had an easy, comfortable drive back to our cabin/campsite on the shores of Lake Quinault. This had been a wonderful day.