Deer Lake and the North Coast

Olympic National Park - North Coast
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The short of it: This is from a trip Brian and I took with our friends, Mark and Rachel. We had planned for 2 nights backpacking at Deer Lake in the rainforest, but the mosquitos and rains were too intense for us. After 1 night, we picked up camp and headed down to the North Coast for an awesome, mosquito-free, and dry evening.

The longer version: Rachel used her map navigational prowess to co-pilot the Prius around the the peninsula.  Unfortunately, we hit a snag with traffic and jamming to Peter, Bjork & John, reached the ranger station just in the nick of time to pick up our bear cans and hit the trail head.

Olympic National Park - North Coast
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The trek to deer lake was an awesome workout, inspired by a watch & a quickly setting sun, we ran up the hill and set up camp just before dark.  Deer Lake is a 3.8 mile and 1600 feet in elevation from the Sol Duc Trailhead. It's also the only lake completely melted thus far in the season.  Despite that the river and waterfalls were gushing

Once we got to the lakes and set up camp we were amazed that despite the rain, the insects were rampant.  We quickly made up some food and wine before crashing for the night.

Olympic National Park - Rainforest
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The next morning the mosquitos were out-of-control, so after breakfast and little fishing action by Mark we packed up our gear and headed down to the natural hot springs to warm up.

We all thought we were going to Plan B (home), but luckily we stopped at the ranger station to drop off our bear cans and learned that we could still camp on the North Coast.

Disjointed from the rest of the park, the Olympic National Park also contains a 60 mile strip of the Pacific coast running down the far northwest of the Olympic Peninsula.

Mark's fishing
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Happy to go to Plan C, we dropped by the local grocer for some beer and wine and hiked a few miles into the North Coast, hilariously cradling a case of Tecate.

After Mark and Brian pitched the tents, Rachel & I hunted for wood to make a fire, and opened up some wine from a bear can before watching the sunset.

After a few drinks we were getting rowdy before making smores & crashing for the evening.  This was an AWESOME evening.

The next morning we walked up and down the beach, checking out the sealife, tide pools and gigantic drift wood before taking the ferry ride home.