Most great hiking destinations do one thing extremely well.
The Olympic Peninsula does three, and the three have almost nothing in common. There is a glaciated mountain range rising to nearly 8,000 feet. There is a temperate rainforest on the western valleys that receives twelve to fourteen feet of rain a year. And there are roughly 73 miles of wilderness coastline, with sea stacks, tide pools, driftwood, and headlands you round on the tide.
They are inside one national park, and they are a few hours' drive from each other around the peninsula's edge.
That structure is the single most important thing to understand before planning. There is no road across the middle. Every road runs in from the perimeter, dead-ends at a trailhead, and comes back out. Hurricane Ridge and the Hoh are 25 miles apart in a straight line and about two and a half hours apart by car.
The mountains
Hurricane Ridge, above Port Angeles, is the accessible alpine. A paved road climbs to about 5,240 feet, and from the parking area the Hurricane Hill trail runs 3.2 miles round trip with roughly 700 feet of gain to a summit view over the interior peaks, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and on a clear day Vancouver Island. The short meadow loops at the visitor center are paved and under a mile, and the wildflowers in July and August are the reason many people come at all.
For more effort, Mount Angeles and the Klahhane Ridge traverse offer a harder day from the same road, with more exposure and better solitude, while Deer Park, reached by a long gravel road, gets you to a similar elevation with a fraction of the traffic. The interior is not day-hikeable, and Mount Olympus at 7,980 feet is a glaciated mountaineering objective 17 miles up the Hoh valley.
The rainforest
The Hoh is the famous one and it earns it. The Hall of Mosses is a 0.8-mile loop through bigleaf maples so thickly draped in club moss that the light goes green, and the Spruce Nature Trail is 1.2 miles and adds the river. Both are flat, both are near the visitor center, and both are worth the drive. The Hoh River Trail continues 17 miles toward Glacier Meadows, and the first few miles make an excellent easy out-and-back through old growth with almost no gain.
The Quinault valley on the south side is the better choice when the Hoh is crowded. The Quinault Rain Forest Nature Trail and the Maple Glade loop are short, the valley holds several record-size trees, and a loop road circles Lake Quinault. The Queets is the wildest of the three and requires fording the river to reach the main trail, which puts it out of range for most visitors most of the year.
Lake Crescent and the waterfalls
This cluster sits on Highway 101 between Port Angeles and Forks, and it is the most efficient stop on the peninsula. Marymere Falls is under two miles round trip from the Storm King Ranger Station, flat through old growth and then a short climb to a 90-foot waterfall, and it is the easy one.
Mount Storm King leaves from the same trailhead and is the opposite: roughly two miles up with about 2,000 feet of gain, ending on a narrow ridge above Lake Crescent. The final section is steep and eroded, and hikers have installed ropes on it over the years. Those ropes are not maintained or sanctioned by the park, the official trail ends before them, and people are injured on this section regularly. The viewpoint before the ropes is excellent and is where most people should stop.
Sol Duc Falls is 1.6 miles round trip through forest to a waterfall dropping into a narrow gorge, one of the most photographed in the park and one of the easiest to reach. And the Spruce Railroad Trail along Lake Crescent is flat, paved for much of its length, open to bikes, and passes through a restored tunnel above the water.
Best Easy Hikes in Olympic National ParkThe coast
The wilderness coast is the part visitors underestimate and the part that most rewards planning. Rialto Beach to Hole-in-the-Wall is about 3 miles round trip over sand and cobble to a sea arch you can walk through at low tide, and it is the introduction. Second Beach and Third Beach near La Push involve a short forested descent to sea stacks and driftwood, and Ruby Beach is a roadside stop with a short walk down.
Shi Shi Beach, reached through the Makah Reservation, is the best of them, roughly 8 miles round trip to the Point of Arches with a long stretch of sea stacks. It requires a Makah Recreation Permit in addition to any park pass, and the approach trail is famously muddy.
Every coastal hike is governed by the tide. Headlands that are walkable at low water are impassable at high, and people are cut off on this coast every year, so carry a tide table, know the height at which each headland closes, and treat the overland trails around headlands, marked with round targets on trees, as the alternative rather than the last resort. Tide pools here are exceptional at low water, and Ozette, Rialto and the beaches near La Push all have them.
The Elwha, and what a river looks like afterward
This is worth a stop of its own, because it is the largest dam removal in the history of the United States and you can walk through the result. Two dams on the Elwha River, Elwha Dam built in 1913 and Glines Canyon Dam in 1927, blocked salmon from more than seventy miles of pristine upstream habitat inside what became the national park. Neither had a fish ladder, and the river's legendary chinook runs, which included fish reported at a hundred pounds, collapsed to a fraction of a percent of their former numbers.
Removal began in 2011 and finished in 2014. Roughly twenty million cubic meters of trapped sediment moved downstream, rebuilt the river mouth, and added tens of acres of new beach at the delta.
What you can see now is the Glines Canyon Spillway Overlook, looking down into the canyon where the dam stood with the abutments left in place deliberately, and former Lake Mills, a broad flat of young alder and cottonwood growing on the old reservoir bed where the revegetation is startling in its speed. Salmon are back above both dam sites and the river is once again reaching the sea with its full sediment load. Madison Falls near the valley mouth is a wheelchair-accessible walk of a few hundred yards, and the upper Elwha valley road washed out years ago, leaving access beyond it on foot or bike and the interior correspondingly quiet.
The wildlife you will and will not see
Roosevelt elk are the peninsula's signature animal, and the park was originally established in part to protect them, with the Hoh and Queets valleys holding the largest unmanaged herd anywhere. You have a genuine chance of seeing them from the rainforest trails, and in autumn you may hear bugling. Black bears are common, particularly in the subalpine meadows in berry season.
Mountain goats are the interesting absence. They were introduced in the 1920s, were never native here, damaged the alpine vegetation and grew dangerously habituated, and one killed a hiker on Klahhane Ridge in 2010. The park removed them by helicopter and lethal means between 2018 and 2020, relocating hundreds to the Cascades where they belong, so you are very unlikely to see one now and that is the intended outcome.
The marmots on Hurricane Ridge, by contrast, are the Olympic marmot, found nowhere else on earth and one of a set of endemic species produced by the peninsula's long isolation between ice, ocean and the Puget lowlands.
Sorting the drive
The practical planning problem is the perimeter. Port Angeles is the base for Hurricane Ridge, Lake Crescent and Sol Duc. Forks is the base for the Hoh, Rialto and the La Push beaches. Lake Quinault is the base for the southern rainforest. And Sequim, on the dry side, gets a fraction of the rain the west side does and is the base for the Dungeness Spit.
Dungeness Spit is worth a paragraph of its own: the longest natural sand spit in the United States, running about five miles into the Strait with a lighthouse at the end and a round trip near eleven miles that is entirely tide-dependent. The refuge protects more than 200 bird species, and it is not part of the national park at all. It is a National Wildlife Refuge with its own fee and its own rules, including no dogs whatsoever.
A sensible three-day shape is Hurricane Ridge and Lake Crescent from Port Angeles, then the Hoh and Rialto from Forks, then Quinault on the way out. Trying to do the Hoh and Hurricane Ridge in one day is the classic mistake.
Olympic National Park: Five Things to Know Before You GoSeason, rain, and permits
The coast and rainforest are year-round, and winter on the west side is wet, dark and quiet, with the rainforest arguably better in the rain. The high country runs roughly July through October, and the Hurricane Ridge road has limited winter hours and closes in storms.
Rain is the defining variable. The Hoh averages twelve to fourteen feet a year while the eastern rain shadow around Sequim gets under twenty inches, and you can drive from one to the other in an hour.
The permit picture is more fragmented than a single national park suggests. A park entry fee applies, wilderness permits are needed for overnights but not day hikes, Shi Shi and Cape Flattery need a Makah Recreation Permit issued by the Makah Tribe, and Dungeness charges a separate refuge fee. Dogs are essentially banned on park trails with a handful of exceptions including the Spruce Railroad Trail, Rialto Beach north to Ellen Creek and the Peabody Creek trail, which surprises people constantly, while adjacent Olympic National Forest is far more permissive.
Four different land managers with four different rule sets around a single loop road is a lot to reconstruct from four websites. Guidepole Hike carries the managing agency, its permit requirement and its dog rules against each trailhead, which on this peninsula is the difference between arriving at Shi Shi with the right permit and arriving with the wrong one.
The gear
The Olympic Peninsula asks you to pack for three climates on the same trip, which is the whole difficulty of the place.
A tide table, because the coastal strip is not optional reading. The headland crossings between Rialto and Shi Shi are passable at low water and impassable at high, the overland ropes are the alternative, and people are stranded on this coast every year.
Genuine rain gear, meaning a hardshell with a hood that works. The Hoh receives something like twelve feet of rain a year and it does not fall only in winter.
Waterproof boots, for the same reason plus the mud.
Layers for three climates, which is the actual planning problem. Hurricane Ridge at five thousand feet, the Hoh at six hundred, and the coast at sea level can differ by twenty-five degrees on the same afternoon, and a trip that visits all three needs all three wardrobes.
Offline maps, since coverage on the peninsula is poor to nonexistent outside Port Angeles and Forks.
Trekking poles, for the descents off the ridge and for the beach cobble, which is harder walking than sand.
And a headlamp, because the rainforest goes dark well before sunset and the coastal strip in a hurry at dusk is how ankles get broken on wet driftwood.
Beyond the park boundary
The national park is the headline, but roughly a third of the peninsula's public land is Olympic National Forest, and it solves problems the park creates. Dogs are allowed on forest trails, which matters given the park's near-total ban. Mountain bikes are permitted on many of them, and dispersed camping is legal in most places.
Several of the best viewpoints on the peninsula are on forest land too. The Mount Ellinor trail on the eastern side climbs steeply to a summit above Lake Cushman with one of the finest views in the range, and the Mount Townsend and Marmot Pass trails on the northeastern side reach subalpine country far drier and clearer than anything on the west. A Northwest Forest Pass or America the Beautiful pass covers parking at most forest trailheads, and the park entrance fee is separate from both.
One side or the other, not both
If you have one day, do Hurricane Hill and Marymere Falls from Port Angeles, or the Hoh loops and Rialto from Forks. One side or the other, not both.
If you have three, use the perimeter properly and give each ecosystem its own day.
And if you only remember one thing: check the tide before any coastal walk, and do not climb the ropes on Storm King.
More in one day in Olympic National Park and three days in Olympic National Park. The Seattle end of the state is in hiking Seattle, and the peninsula's rivers are legendary steelhead water: see fly fishing for Olympic Peninsula steelhead.
The one-day and three-day versions of this trip are in one day in Olympic National Park and three days in Olympic National Park. The nearest city is covered in hiking Seattle, and the range across the sound is in one day at Mount Rainier. The coastal access rules that govern where you may walk below the tideline are in public tidelands and private beaches.
