You can hike from a glacier to a rainforest to a wild beach all in one Washington park

It’s mountains, rainforest and coastline all at once

Olympic National Park sits on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and it doesn’t fit into any one category.

You’ve got glacier-capped peaks in the middle, one of the finest temperate rainforests in the country to the west, and 73 miles of wild Pacific coastline to the south.

All of it covers 922,651 acres, and nearly 95 percent of that is designated wilderness. More than 3.5 million people came here in 2025, and most of them left wondering why it took them so long.

Two presidents shaped what the park is today

The story starts with elk. President Theodore Roosevelt set aside the area as Mount Olympus National Monument in 1909, mostly to stop hunters from wiping out the Roosevelt elk that roamed the peninsula.

The park’s working title at one point was simply “Elk National Park.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt officially redesignated it as Olympic National Park on June 29, 1938.

Long before either of them, the Hoh, Quileute, Makah, Quinault, Skokomish, and Klallam peoples had managed this land for thousands of years.

In 1988, Congress formally named 95 percent of the park the Daniel J. Evans Wilderness.

Hurricane Ridge sits at 5,242 feet above the clouds

Drive 17 miles south from Port Angeles and you climb to Hurricane Ridge, the park’s most accessible alpine area at 5,242 feet.

On a clear day, you can see the full run of the Olympic Mountains in front of you and Vancouver Island across the Strait of Juan de Fuca behind you.

The Hurricane Hill Trail covers 3.2 miles round-trip on a paved path and ends with a 360-degree view. Black-tailed deer graze the meadows along the ridgeline, sometimes close enough to make you slow your pace.

The Day Lodge burned in May 2023, so bring your own food and water.

The Hoh Rain Forest gets 140 inches of rain a year

Head west to the Hoh Rain Forest and the landscape shifts completely.

This place pulls in 140 to 170 inches of rain a year, putting it among the wettest spots in the country.

Ancient Sitka spruce, Western hemlock, Douglas fir, and bigleaf maple rise overhead, their trunks and branches buried under thick moss. The forest floor runs solid green with ferns, mosses, and lichens.

Fallen trees, called nurse logs, decompose slowly and become the foundation for new trees that grow in straight rows along their length. Roosevelt elk move through regularly, unhurried and easy to spot.

Walk through a green tunnel of moss-draped maples

The Hall of Mosses Trail starts at the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center and runs 0.8 miles in a loop.

The trail passes under a canopy of bigleaf maples so heavily draped in hanging moss that they form a solid green arch above you.

It works for all ages and fitness levels, though there are some rolling sections and a few stairs.

If you want more distance, the Spruce Nature Trail picks up nearby and adds 1.2 miles through old-growth forest along the Hoh River. Get there early in summer.

The parking area fills by 9 or 10 a.m. on busy mornings.

Seventy-three miles of coastline with no buildings in sight

Olympic protects 73 miles of wilderness coast, the longest undeveloped stretch in the lower 48.

The shoreline is all sea stacks, natural arches, driftwood piles the size of cars, and tide pools that crack open at low tide to reveal sea stars, anemones, sea urchins, and hermit crabs.

The Ozette Triangle is a nine-mile loop that mixes boardwalk trails through coastal cedar forest with three miles of beach between Cape Alava and Sand Point. It draws fewer people than the park’s bigger-name beaches.

Tides along this coast shift fast and can cut off trails, so check the tide charts before you head out.

Ruby Beach’s sea stacks rise straight from the water

Ruby Beach is the most photographed spot on the coast, and when you see the sea stacks standing in the surf with driftwood scattered across the sand around them, the reason is obvious.

A few miles north near Forks, Rialto Beach runs to the Hole-in-the-Wall, a natural sea arch about 1.5 miles up the shore that you can walk through at low tide.

Second Beach and Third Beach near La Push pull smaller crowds and deliver the same sea stacks and tide pools. At any of these, the sun drops straight into the Pacific at sunset.

Lake Crescent is so clear you can see the bottom

Lake Crescent sits along Highway 101 about 20 miles west of Port Angeles, carved by glaciers and fed by snowmelt. The water runs deep blue and stays clear enough to see the bottom well below the surface.

Kayaking, paddleboarding, and swimming draw visitors through the warmer months.

The Marymere Falls Trail covers about 1.8 miles round trip through old-growth forest and ends at a waterfall roughly 90 feet tall.

Along the lake’s north shore, the Spruce Railroad Trail is paved and mostly flat, good for walking or biking without a serious elevation gain.

Sol Duc’s hot springs sit deep in old-growth forest

Sol Duc takes its name from a Quileute word meaning “sparkling waters,” and the valley earns it.

Naturally heated mineral pools open seasonally from late March through October, surrounded by old-growth forest 28 miles west of Port Angeles.

Sol Duc Falls is a short trip from the resort area, about 1.6 miles round trip, and the waterfall splits into several chutes before dropping into a narrow gorge.

The Lover’s Lane Loop connects the resort to the falls and back along the opposite bank of the Sol Duc River, giving you two different views of the same stretch of water.

Five thousand Roosevelt elk roam the park’s forests

About 5,000 Roosevelt elk live inside the park, making this the largest unmanaged herd of the subspecies in its native range. These are the biggest elk in North America.

Bulls run 700 to 1,200 pounds. The push to protect them from overhunting is the reason the park exists at all.

Beyond elk, the park holds black bears, black-tailed deer, cougars, and hundreds of bird species.

The Olympic marmot lives only in the park’s subalpine meadows and nowhere else on Earth, a detail that tends to stick with people long after they leave.

Lake Crescent holds two fish species found nowhere else

Olympic’s geography did something unusual to its wildlife. The peninsula sits isolated enough that some species evolved here and stopped.

The Olympic marmot is one. The Olympic torrent salamander and Olympic snow mole are two more.

Lake Crescent holds two endemic trout subspecies, the Beardslee and the Crescenti, both cut off from outside populations for thousands of years and now found in no other body of water on Earth.

The park protects more than 1,200 native plant species, including eight found only in the Olympic Mountains. Scientists have studied this peninsula for decades as a working model for how isolation shapes evolution.

Two dams came down and the salmon came back

The Elwha River runs 45 miles from the base of Mount Olympus to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Two dams built in the early 1900s blocked salmon from most of that distance and cut annual returns from an estimated 400,000 fish down to roughly 3,000.

Between 2011 and 2014, both dams came out in what was then the largest dam removal project in the world. More than 70 miles of river opened back up.

Salmon and trout began returning to stretches they hadn’t reached in a century.

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe led much of the effort, and river recovery programs worldwide now point to the Elwha as the model.

Explore Olympic National Park in Washington

Olympic National Park sits about two and a half hours from Seattle by car and ferry. The park has no single road connecting its regions, so plan by area and expect real driving between zones.

No timed-entry reservations are required for day use right now. If you plan to camp overnight in the backcountry, you’ll need a wilderness permit.

Note that the Staircase area on the park’s southeast side is closed through at least Oct. 2026 because of hazards left by the 2025 Bear Gulch Fire.

The park has over 600 miles of trails, from short paved loops to multi-day routes. Check the official website for current conditions before you go.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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