Duckabush II

My oldest brother and his wife have fond memories of a backpacking trip we took along the Duckabush River in 1990. They still talk about it. So when their son visited me earlier this month, it was important for him to see the Duckabush. He had heard too much about the river not to go there.

The Duckabush is one of five major rivers that originate in the eastern slopes of the Olympic Mountains and flow into the Hood Canal. The other four—going from north to south—are the Quilcene, Dosewallips, Hamma Hamma, and Skokomish. All are better known than the Duckabush as more trails and forest roads exist to explore their watersheds. Many hikers and backpackers skip the Duckabush because of the long hike it takes to get above the tree line.

Like Rodney Dangerfield the Duckabush doesn’t get much respect.

In fact, if you look at a map of the Olympics, you might wonder whether the Duckabush is even needed. It runs roughly parallel to the better-known Dosewallips River and flows into the Hood Canal only about three miles south of the Dosewallips river mouth.

The Dosewallips River Road takes you farther into the mountains and ends at a higher elevation than the Duckabush River Road. It’s not surprising that the Dosewallips has more visitors as less hiking is needed to get into the heart of the Olympics. The same goes for the Quilcene, Hamma Hamma, and Skokomish rivers.

The Duckabush River trail also has Big Hump, a killer 1000-foot climb that’s just 3.5 miles from the start of the trail. If you want to continue up the river, you have to hike over this obstacle. When you get back down to the river again on the other side of the hump, you haven’t gained much elevation.

I checked my hiking journal to see if it would help me remember the backpacking trip my brother, my sister-in-law, and I took. It didn’t. The journal says we spent two nights on the river, both in the first good place to camp past Big Hump. We had perfect weather, plenty of food, and big fires each night. Sounds like an enjoyable but not especially memorable trip. We brought a small movie camera with us, but any footage we took no longer exists.

I do remember a longer hike I made to the Upper Duckabush in 1987. That was a 4-day trip to Hart Lake. I didn’t reach the lake until late on the second day. It was cold and overcast when I got there, but about 9:00 PM the moon came up over Mt. Duckabush in an unforgettable sight. The next day I climbed a ridge above the lake and got a view of Lake Quinault. Lake Quinault is on the western, rain-forest side of the Olympics. If you are patient enough to hike the length of the Duckabush, you can travel a long way into the backcountry. You won’t see many people along the trail.

Back to the present. My nephew and I visited the Duckabush River on September 11th along with K’s nephew. Unlike our hike to Marmot Pass, this time we took it easy. Instead of going to the top of Big Hump, we just followed the tight switchbacks up far enough to reach a perfect place for lunch—a ledge with a super view of the river valley as it heads east toward civilization. While ascending the hump, evidence of last fall’s forest fire was everywhere. I read that the trail didn’t reopen until July.

On the way back down the Duckabush River Road, we stopped to hike down to Ranger Hole, so named because the rangers who lived at the cabin near the trailhead used to fish there. If you ignore the warnings and are a polar-bear club wannabe, the deep pool, at the bottom of an impressive set of white rapids, also doubles as a swimming hole. My nephew jumped off the bluff into the pool. I waded in from shore up to my neck. The water temperature was probably in the low fifties.

The title of this post doesn’t refer to our recent day hike. It’s a reminder to make another backpacking trip along the Duckabush, hopefully with my brother’s family when they visit me again. The often-overlooked river needs more visitors.