Olympics: Day 2

On the second day of our trip to Olympic National Park, Zephyr stayed home and watched TV all day.  The girls went shopping in Port Angeles.  And Cory and I toured the Elwha River which was the main reason for the whole trip.  You see, we're working on a dam removal project on our district and we wanted to visualize the post-dam-removal effects of our action, so we wanted to see what was left of the Glines Canyon Dam which was formerly located on the upper Elwha River.

The Elwha Ranger Station is now abandoned because its only access road was cut off in a flood a few years ago

The hike in is mostly along the road which no vehicles use since it was washed out in a flood a few years ago

First of all, we had to hike in a few miles since flooding had washed out the road.  But that just thinned out the people which was actually really nice.  For most of the hike, we had the place to ourselves.  And it was actually pretty nice to have the dam overlook to ourselves to just see what the reservoir and lake did after the dam was removed.

The area of the old reservoir from the left abutment of what's left of the Glines Canyon Dam

The right abutment of the Glines Canyon Dam

The left abutment and spillway of the former Glines Canyon Dam (above and below)