The following day dawned clear and blue, scarcely a cloud in the sky. With the promise of good weather we all returned to the Shady Lane trailhead while the dew was still fresh on the moss, and stepped into a world I never knew existed.


Shauna and me near the trailhead.

Our progress on the trail was painfully slow at first, as I found myself stopping to marvel at something every few feet along along the way. There are worlds within worlds beneath the canopy of the temperate rainforest. Life taking hold in seemingly impossible places, and revealing its self in layers to us as we took the time to look. There are miracles of beauty at every scale here, from the megalithic trees to the micro-plants whose natural range is limited to perhaps only a few square miles of this forest floor. Here's a poor sampling of what we saw.






















Finally we reached the bridge at Elk Creek, and the ranger station there. We tarried there for a few moments, then picked up the trail to staircase rapids. We followed this path through a stand of truly gigantic Douglas Firs and Western Red Cedars, and past crystal green pools on the tumbling upper Skokomish river.





The trail ended abruptly about a mile from the ranger station, at a washed out bridge. A little bummed out we turned around and started back for shady lane.

Much, much more to come...