Overland in the Americas: Animal Olympiad

Olympic National Park is on a peninsula a couple of hours drive west of Seattle across the Puget Sound. Uber excitingly for us it is also chock full of endemic mammals (marmots, flying squirrels, chipmunks are all entirely separate species. that have been seperated from the rest of the continent since a glaciation. On arrival at the visitor centre were were surprised to see little mention of these one of a kind olympic animals. There is even one we didn't even know existed, the mountain beaver, until we saw it at the museum in New York. The rangers clearly hadn't had anyone enquire about these creatures for some time and one of them was sent off to the back of a distant closet to find their aged stuffed specimen, modelled here by Ralph. It was more of a big mole than a beaver.

the mountain beaver is a vicious predator

flying squirrels are actually harder to spot than this

Having quickly pitched the tent at Heart O' the Hills campsite we headed up Hurricane Ridge in search of some endemic olympic mammals. There was still 10ft of snow at the top car park and it was getting late so despite the fantastic views and sunny evening we were the only people there. We spotted our first olympic marmot, grazing on the slope in front of the visitor centre and a black tailed deer was making the most of it being deserted to graze the juicy grass by the car park. We had a fantastic view while cooking on the stove, it was a super scenic meal!

Hurricane ridge

more room than our kitchen a home

I think i can see booze king from here (sorry for the biggleswade specific joke)

A National Park volunteer arrived with pick up and trailer full of telescopes which he spent 2 hours setting up for the evening programme! This proved to be even more dedicated when we realised what was involved and that he did it most nights over the whole summer season. As it got dark it also dropped to 4 c and we and a couple of others stood intently watching the sky for gaps in the clouds which as we were pretty much at the top of a mountain kept appearing then would get enveloped in cloud, so after 3 quite neck breaking hours of looking up we had seen Saturn through the big telescope which was brilliant as we could see the rings, a star cluster called M13 and a couple of constellations very briefly.

Next day we climbed a peak called Storm King. We started out through mossy old growth coniferous forest then the path began switchbacking up 2000ft of forested ridge. Ralph thought it was a bit tame and we thought it was funny when the sign ahead said that the trail was not maintained beyond this point as it looked very well kept indeed. Then all of a sudden it got very, very, steep and we were out on the exposed ridge with steep drops either side....having scrabbled up for a bit we found a rope. The route was impossible to climb without the rope, but grabbing it was a slight leap of faith as it looked quite unofficial and more importantly we couldn't actually see what it was tied to! Luckly for us the ropes held our wait despite our weeks of american food. More ropes followed upto the top, it was brilliant fun...until I got to a really scrabbly bit and there were no ropes in sight and I froze, Ralph being heroic (i think Fi was feeling a bit funny when she wrote this) rescued me and we made do with climbing out to a lower peak on the way back down instead!