Here is a tale of Deliverance in reverse. Two men hike up a river into the darkness of the woods. Only these woods aren't so dark. And as for the dam, it's scheduled to be removed starting in 2012, not serve as a water-logged allegory for washing away the sinful lost path of the modern world.
We saw things on the Elwha River trail last weekend that no man has ever seen.
Because, it turns out, we weren't on the Elwha River trail.
I was taking time away from my neighborhood news business for a break from laptop glare. I last visited the Elwha in 2003. Fishing had been spectacular then. I had grand plans for a return. Our newly hired advertising guy tagged along. Now day one was burned on the wrong trail. We camped near a fantastic waterfall, and considered the 5-mile hike out.
We had driven past the turn for the Elwha trailhead and were marching for the Appleton Pass. Plans for a triumphant return to the Elwha were broken. But the hike out went quickly and we found a stinking, bubbling silver lining. The wrong trail had hot springs. Ad guy and I saw naked people. I utilized a volunteer pair of swim trunks. The water was 95 degrees of renewed enthusiasm. Ad guy and I decided we'd get back in the car and set out to reclaim our Elwha trip.
Salvaging the trip meant I had to give up hope of achieving the original goal--Chicago camp, some 18 miles up the Elwha. Instead, I surrendered to the fact we couldn't go higher than Elkhorn, still 11 miles in.
So, for possibly the first time in history, a Honda Civic was part of an Elwha River hike. We drove back to the turn to Whiskey Bend trailhead we missed the day before, made our way to the trail and started out once more.
The Elwha River trail is sneaky. In total, it gains little more than 800 feet of elevation from trailhead to its riverside campsites starting around 9 miles in. The path, however, ascends and descends again and again throughout its wooded course. Also, for a river trail it lacks mightily in the river department until mile 9 or so. Instead, the only hint that the Elwha is near through much of the hike is a distant, tree-muffled roar.
Arriving at Elkhorn, the hiker finds a flat riverside expanse with wooden shelters. It feels like a little like a fort. People will sometimes make camp in the shelters--especially when it rains. But this day is crisp and bright and the shelters feel too cool and mossy to make a home in.
Some people make returning to Elkhorn an annual ritual but it is a small club. I have been there twice, now, and have met only two other people camping along the river during my stays. The old man camped at Elkhorn this time is a fisherman. He sleeps during the bright part of the day, he says, because the fishing is better in the morning and early evening. We leave him at Elkhorn and set out to do some fishing, bright light of day be damned.
120 years ago, the Press Expedition passed through Elkhorn along this trail in a race to cross the Olympic Peninsula. It was Seattle's first reality show. The Seattle Press newspaper promised rewards to the first men who could cross the Olympics. The expedition dragged a boat up the Elwha and across the mountains starting in fall, 1889. A neighborhood news blogger and his ad sales guy dragged their packs up the river 120 years later.
Because we weren't dragging a boat--or abandoning mules--we had time for fishing. The water was crystal clear and the sky, high and clear too. With the high visibility--the old man's "bright light"--the rainbow trout this year were wary and tentative.
In these rapids, I eventually coaxed one gorgeous trout from the swirls. I also found this horn from one of the elk herds that cross the river as they make their way out of the mountains to winter in the coastal lowlands outside Port Angeles.
And there she is. The purpose of our journey. This fish was taken on a woolly bugger fly. She was coaxed from a deep pool, fooled in the highly-aerated wash of the rapids. It was the only fish that would volunteer itself from those rapids. I snapped a few rushed, panicked pictures and got her back in the water as quickly as possible. Two days and 16 miles of hiking (on two different trails) were all justified by that one moment on the Elwha.
For the rainbows of the Elwha, we are living in a very odd moment in time. In 1910, construction began on the Elwha River dam, the first of two dams constructed on the river in the days when the quest for hydroelectric power was seen as the pathway for rural communities to make the leap into the 20th century. The dams also meant the river's rainbow trout would enjoy 100 years of solitude.
Soon salmon will rejoin these trout. The Elwha's dams are being removed, and with them, the barriers to anadromous fish returning from the sea. How this will change life for the Elwha's trout is yet to be seen. For me, it's part of the draw of returning to the Elwha. We know that all things change, in time. On the Elwha, I know exactly what is changing. I'm excited to visit it before it does.
The river changes year to year, also. Here a pile of massive trees and branches has collected making a perfect home for the river's trout.
We were resigned to limiting our adventure on the Elwha to the area of the river between Mary's Falls and Elkhorn. The trail in this section is low and canopied. It's a northwest jungle rich with birds and deer. We see stubborn grouse reluctantly leaving the trail ahead. We find elk and bear sign. It's hard to be disappointed with this part of the Elwha as a destination.
Our camp at Mary's Falls is not ideal. We sacrifice the softness of the forest floor for the convenience of the river. Camping on rocks is unwise without a bed pad. Another REI must-have contraption: a Katedyn water filter. Consider this product endorsement my universal thanks for the existence of water filters. They are audacious machines--turning rivers into water you can safely drink! I don't believe in the apocalypse (too convenient!), but if it comes, I will choose the Katedyn and set off on the road.
Fishing with somebody else is unnatural for me. Ad guy, I apologize for ditching you so many times. Blame my father. Fishing a river, to him, meant a mad dash forward for the next bend that always looks even more promising than the last. It is a sickness and why I usually spend more time walking than fishing.
At the end of the third day, I had caught five fish. Not complaining. Just noting. The rainbows were picky and uninterested in anything I offered in this particular deep, blue hole. The sun made a showing and, ad guy having long ago given up and marched back to camp, I was alone on the river in the October sun. So I jumped into the Elwha. Five seconds later, I scrambled back to shore. Razor blades of cold in my feet. But I was clean, reawakened, and ready for the fourth day's hike out.
The problem with being nine miles up a river is you have to hike nine miles out. We pack up camp on the morning of the fourth day, our packs are now relieved of their bags of peanuts and oatmeal packets and feel miraculously light. Ad guy's iPhone had survived the first three days and--who knew?--the GPS works without a service connection. If only we had been looking at it when we missed the trailhead on day one.
