South Fork Hoh - Big Flat

For our vacation we decided to stay at Ocean Shores and use that as a launching point for day hikes into the Hoh Rainforest and surrounding areas in the Olympic National Park.  Finding a place around Lake Quinault would have meant a lot less driving, but waking up to the ocean every morning was awesome.  We had great weather all week - sunny days are rare in the rainforest so we felt very fortunate!  

Our first adventure was the South Fork Hoh-Big Flat trail.    Unfortunately,  we didn't follow the guidebook exactly for mileage waypoints and ended up at the wrong spot.  We weren't the only ones, two other carloads of hikers were there too and they told us the bridge was washed out and the trail inaccessible.   We decided we'd come too far to let a little washout keep us from the trail, so we put on our bad-ass faces and ventured out. 

We crossed the creek and headed onto an abandoned forest road we thought was the way to the trail.  it started out fairly accessible, but as we got deeper in the woods it got more overgrown.  After another creek crossing it became inaccessible - and really, really, really buggy.    We turned back and tried another road we had seen off to the right thinking it might lead us to the trail,  but all we found was an abandoned lean-to probably used by a hunter years ago.   We gave up and returned to the parking lot, disappointed that the trail had been left to the elements and no longer existed.  We decided to check out the nearby campground and had the realization that the turn to the campground had the real entrance sign that the guidebook talked about, and that we probably were in the wrong place.  So we followed the road past the campground and it started to match the guidebook exactly.  Here's our lesson for the day:  Match the mileage to the guidebook!!  The combination of other hikers telling us the trail was washed out along with the guidebook saying there was no trailhead sign made us think we were int he right place. Had we followed the mileage waypoints better we would have found the right place much sooner!

The real trail was clearly marked and it was beautiful;  clover lined and full of really, really big trees!

We had to cross a couple creeks along the way but they weren't too difficult to navigate. Because of late start due to our misadventure, we had to make Big Flat our destination rather than the South Fork Hoh so we would be sure to make it back to the car by dark.   We were really sad we didn't have time to go the whole way,  but so glad we found the real trail and got to enjoy the area.



Even with our mis-start and all the bugs,  we had a really great day.  Finally getting in to the Olympic National Park and seeing real old-growth forest was so worth it.  This trail was a little bit overgrown in places, but that didn't pose a problem. We didn't see another soul on the trail even though there were two cars at the parking lot.  Considering our late start we assumed they must have gone up camping somewhere.   Someday maybe we'll make it back to go all the way to the South Fork destination, but that's so hard for us to do with so many trails yet unexplored.  We did learn a couple of valuable lessons about following directions and having better maps!