Snowshoeing at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park, January 2012

Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park, in Washington state, is open year-round, although the road does close nightly during the winter, and sometime when the weather gets really bad. Chains are definitely required on all vehicles depending on the weather, as you can see from the driving portions of the video.

While at the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center, we signed up for their snowshoeing excursion, which lasted about an hour and a half with frequent stops along the way for informative sessions with our National Park Service guide, Lily. She was great, and the walk was pretty easy, no rough terrain, although there was a foot of powder everywhere.

The weather is pretty iffy. It's called Hurricane Ridge for a reason, winds often top out at well over hurricane force. You rise to an altitude of 5242' above sea level (from sea level) in 17 miles of road. It is definitely winter at the top of the ridge during the winter. In Port Angeles, at the bottom of the hill, the weather is often much milder; a more typical northwest scene of rain.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Winter
• Snow
• Storm
• Cold
• Winter Storm
• snowshoeing
• Fun
• Olympic National Park
• Hurricane Ridge
• hiking
• Mountain
• Climbing
• Mountains
• snowy
• trees
• washington state
• olympic peninsula

[trogdork10]

Hey are you doing seahawks videos next year?

[charliemac64]

@trogdork10 I plan on it, but life happens sometimes, eh? We'll see how it goes.  But as of now, yes.

[Seatownxicano]

You should stop my parents Mexican resturante

[cooltown55]

Damn its beautiful out there. Great video CM64.

[wnxpigpen]

Looks like an awesome trip. Spectacular.