Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center
- January 4, 2001
- Rated 4 of 5 by
Quan from Seattle, Washington
The Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center is the best place to explore the forest, for convenient nature trails surround it. We took one of the two loop hikes that was about a mile long. A trail has been created for your convenience, but you can see that the rest of the forest floor is cloaked with mosses, ferns, and huge fungi, forming a soft and thick carpet on the forest floor. Enormous old-growth Douglas fir and other trees are shown to be hundred of years old. According to the brochure, some of the open areas are the grazing areas for elks and other wildlife, but I have to admit we did not see any.
From journal Beautiful Olympic Peninsula
Editor Pick
The Hoh Rainforest
- January 4, 2001
- Rated 4 of 5 by
Quan from Seattle, Washington
Nothing can quite describe the Hoh Rainforest, supposedly the only coniferous rainforest in the world. The Hoh Rainforest can be reached by traveling 13 miles south from Forks on Route 101, then 19 miles east on Hoh River Road. The average annual precipitation in this area is 145 inches, of which more than 100 fall between October and March.
We lucked out, in that the sky was spotlessly blue the day we drove into Hoh. I will never forget the approach to the rainforest. My mom had asked my stepfather to turn back on a prior trip, and I finally understood why. Before you even get close to the rainforest, the first thing you notice are large trees, covered with moss hovering over the roads and over the cars that enter their canopy. The moss generates this feeling of airlessness and listlessness, while the sunlight that filters through the thick forest canopy adds to the rainforest a spooky feeling. To make it short, the moss over the branches looks just like what I imagine ghosts to look like, those ephemeral beings in Chinese fiction who float around trying to free their spirits so that their soul can enter the other world and be reincarnated. Some have called it mythical--I truly agree.
From journal Beautiful Olympic Peninsula