The Washington State Hiking Podcast
Welcome to the The Washington State Hiking Podcast with your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming. Along with part time co-host and guidebook author Craig Romano, she provides practical and timely seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers of all skill and ability levels that is practical, accurate, fun and inclusive. We cover hikes near Seattle and Tacoma as well as hikes all across Washington from the rain forests of the Olympic Peninsula to the Shrub Steppe of Eastern Washington.
Jennie is a middle aged, plus sized, frequently solo slow hiker and a born and raised Washingtonian and has enjoyed Washington's trails her entire life. Craig is a trail runner and ultra marathoner who also loves the mellow walk close to home. Originally from New Hampshire, he has made his home in Washington for more than 30 years. He the author of more than 20 guidebooks covering trails across Washington State and beyond.
The Washington State Hiking Podcast
Visiting Hurricane Ridge on Transit after the lodge fire
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Jennie shares about her recent experience taking the Clallam Transit shuttle from downtown Port Angeles to Hurricane Ridge, as well as what to expect at Hurricane Ridge after the fire and without the day lodge.
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Welcome to The Washington State hiking podcast. I'm your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming, along with my part time co host, guidebook author Craig Romano, we provide practical and timely, seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers and trail runners of all skill and ability levels that is helpful, accurate, fun and inclusive. We would love to hear from you our listeners the second link in the show notes, right below the tip jar hint. Hint is our voice memo link. Please leave us a voice memo with your question and we will answer it in a future episode. Hi everyone. Jennie, here. I wanted to talk today a little bit about hurricane ridge in Olympic National Park, specifically for the summer of 2024 and I recently went up there for the first time since the fire that destroyed the day lodge in May of 2023 and based on that experience, I wanted to just share a little bit with you about what it's like to actually be there now and how things are going to shake out at hurricane ridge in the summer of 2024 so The first thing I wanted to talk about is the hurricane Ridge shuttle, which is a bus operated by clown transit that goes from downtown Port Angeles, the gateway transit center, up to hurricane ridge. And I gotta tell you, like I'm a big fan of transit, and I'm always enjoying experimenting with transit options to get to places for hiking for a variety of reasons, whether that's being tired and just wanting to chill, to dealing with parking and whatever, but it was a really awesome experience. So I want to tell you a little bit about that and a little bit about what to expect at hurricane bridge. So let's start with the bus so it runs every day this summer, Memorial Day through Labor Day, including weekdays. There's no reservations. So if you're going on a weekend, it could be a good idea to get there a little bit early just to make sure you can get a spot. The most important thing about the bus is that you do have to pay the entrance fee to Olympic National Park. Now, if you have an and that's $15 for an individual, or if you have a national park pass, I have an America the Beautiful Pass, which is a all federal lands pass for a year that costs$80 there's also a year round pass for just Olympic National Park, which is $55 so you need to have your pass or your ticket for the day with you. You can buy it online. You can there's different options. You can actually buy the park entrance pass through. There is like a QR code where you can do it. So there are options, but just make sure that you have that before you board the bus, because you have to show that along with your ID in order to board. So that is probably the biggest thing to be aware of. I thought this was awesome. There's plenty of free parking in the area. I like it's like a regular transit bus. It took 45 minutes. It was absolutely wonderful. I just loved it. So I think that's the main thing. I want to say. The schedule is on their website, and I'll put it in the show notes. In case, if you still want to go this summer, I would expect it to be somewhat similar next summer, although that won't be announced for a while, it allows you to bypass any parking hassles, any long waits at the ticket booth, which sometimes happen. So it's really fantastic, and it only costs $2 round trip. It's really, really great. I don't think there's a vehicle you could drive up there and back for $2 that's for sure. So this summer, summer of 2024 it is going every hour between 8am and 5pm basically, you have to look at the schedule, but yeah, and then when you're going up there, it also stops at a couple of trailheads, including the one that's near the park entrance station. So there are a couple other options of places you can get off, but it's not hop on, hop off, hop off. You can't just get off wherever you want. And importantly, it does not stop at the Visitor Center or the park. So that's why you need to get your park pass ahead of time. And if you want to go to the visitor center, you'd have to get there on your own. Okay, so that's what you need to know about the bus. Yeah, I can't say enough good things about it. It was wonderful. Okay, so regardless of how you get up to hurricane Ridge, what you can expect when you get there is that there are blushing toilets. There's not a lot of them. They're in a trailer. But it's not like Port A potties. It's like real toilets. You can wash your hands. The water is not potable, so that's important, um, but there are toilets, they have a larger wheelchair accessible stall. However, I noticed that the way the ramp was to go up to the door. If you were using a wheelchair, you wouldn't be able to open the door and get around the door on the ramp, if that makes sense. So, well, there's a nice ramp to get up there. I think using those restrooms is going to be pretty challenging if you are using a wheelchair, so, and even a walker might be a little bit tricky. So I just wanted to mention that there's also a small trailer that the Rangers are working out of it was not open when I was there, which was a Thursday. So I'm not quite sure what's going on with that, but there were lots of signs up, but there's nothing else up there. So I think what's really important about going to hurricane bridge this summer, and I'm assuming probably in 2025 as well, is there? There are no services. There are no indoor spaces, there is no food available. I think the Rangers are there, but there's it's very different than it was before. So you really need to be self sufficient. There's no cell phone service. My phone picks up a signal from Canada in certain places, on hurricane Ridge, but you got to be careful about that, because my phone, I don't pay anything extra to use it in Canada. But if you do, watch out for that. Make sure you have your phone in airplane mode. So as long as you're self sufficient, it's a really, still, really wonderful, beautiful as ever place to go. Um, when I was there, the road was closed from Hurricane Ridge up to the hurricane Hill trail head, so that adds a three mile round trip and about 300 feet of elevation gain onto the hurricane Hill hike, which is also about three miles and about 600 feet of elevation gain. Now the road is sometimes open, so I'm not sure why it wasn't open the day I was there. But also, if you take the bus up there, the bus turns around where the lodge used to be. So even if the road is open, you would still have to walk if you went up there by bus. There are a couple of picnic tables. There are a few in the picnic areas along the road between hurricane ridge and the hurricane Hill Trailhead. Those are some of my favorite picnic tables anywhere in Washington. They have an amazing view. There's deer around, um, yeah. So there's and there's like, one or two picnic tables, kind of in the actual hurricane Ridge parking lot area. But there really is not a lot there. So it's mostly going to be checking out the views and hiking. Um, what else did I want to say about it? Oh, just that. When I was there, I saw several marmots and deer. So I've never been up there and not seen deer. I've seen marmots there, often, maybe not every time. I've also often seen black bears there on that, not right next to the trail, but on the hillside, kind of across from the hurricane Hill trail. I did not see a bear on my recent visit, but there were folks who had seen one earlier in the day. So just be aware for that. And that's kind of aware of that, and that's kind of a fun treat as well. There are lots of different hikes you can do from Hurricane hill or from Hurricane bridge. Hurricane Hill is kind of the classic. I really love that hike, but there are lots of other. It's pretty mellow. There are lots of other great ones. The Park Service has a great hiking page for hurricane bridge. So I think the important thing to know it's as beautiful as ever. It's still busy. The bus is a great option for beating the crowds, but just that, you really have to be self sufficient up there. As long as you are, it's still a great place to hike, a great place to go check out the view, a great place to bring a visitor who's visiting you. I. Um, and I'll also just mention that if you're in Seattle, Everett, Tacoma, maybe even Olympia, this is a very doable day trip. When I did tours into the parks, one of the tours that we did went up to hurricane bridge and a couple other places in the park. And yeah, it's a great day trips. So even if you're not staying over on the Olympic Peninsula and you live in the greater Seattle area, this is a totally doable day trip as well. Makes it more affordable, since especially summer, lodging can be really expensive. So I think that's about it. I think that's everything that I wanted to share with you about what it's like to go up there and take the bus in 2024 so I hope you get the chance to go up there and check it out. And it was very weird to be up there and have the lodge be gone. There's there's no trace of it. There's just a fence around where the building was. I really hope that something will be rebuilt there, because it's such a beautiful place. Okay, bye for now you.
