Mount Rose

Headed up to Mount Rose for a conditioning hike. This hike gains 3,500 ft in 2.9 miles. I heard that snowshoes were needed near the top of the trail with the new snow. We ended up carrying our snowshoes the whole way, as the trail was well packed down.
There is a nice cascading stream near the beginning of the trail.

This trail is a series of switchbacks in the forest. There are a couple of places where you can see Lake Cushman through the trees.

We wore our microspikes from about 2,100 ft above sea level.
The forest was pretty with all the fresh snow.

Little icicles in the moss

Snow laden trees

icicles on boulders

About 0.25 mile from the summit we saw a boot track leading out to a ridge with nice views.

From the ridge we could see Cooper Mountain, Mt Washington and Mt Elinor. We were careful to stay away from the cornice at the edge.

a short distance further is another view area looking down towards Lake Cushman and Hood Canal

Turning around from the view area, I could see we were very close to the summit. About 0.1 of a mile and 200 ft of gain to go.

Summit of Mount Rose














I didn't feel comfortable going all the way out of the snow covered rocks at the summit. North end of Lake Cushman down below on the left. Some of the snow covered Olympic peaks.

The top of Mount Rose is in the trees. Peek of Mt Elinor through the trees.

View of Lake Cushman and Hood Canal while descending the top of Mount Rose

It started snowing as we hiked down the trail.

Beach 4

For our final beach hike/walk of this trip we headed to Beach 4 (north of Kalaloch) at low tide for the tide pools. It's about 1 mile round trip to the tide pool area from the parking lot.
At the beginning the trail splits, left down to the beach and right to an overlook.

Overlook of Beach 4 and the tidal pool area.
Beach 4 is one of the beaches between Kalaloch and Ruby Beach. The "beach" extends from the Queets River to the south to the Hoh River to the north.

Very short trail down to the beach.

Nice wooden bridge over the creek

looking north to the tidal pool area

From the bridge, I took this part of the rocky way down.

View of the bridge over the creek

In the spring, there is lots of water running over the cliffs

We spent quite a bit of time during low tide exploring these rocks and the tide pools among them. I would love to come back when there are negative tides to explore more.

As the tide turned, we returned down the beach to   the trail up to the parking area.

First Beach

We stayed in a cabin for 3 nights in the Quileute Indian Reservation on First Beach. It was easy to walk from our cabin to the beach. To the south is Quateata (never safe to try to walk around on the shore side) and James Island to the north.

We had some nice sunsets

and a pretty dawn after a night of hail and rain.













Lots of seagulls