The park · 2 hours from the estate
The Hoh Rain Forest
Two hours from the estate, up its own river valley, the Hoh is the one that looks the way people imagine when they hear “temperate rain forest” — bigleaf maples sleeved in club moss, light the color of jade, Roosevelt elk stepping through the ferns. It is widely, and correctly, considered one of the most magical places in the park.
- Drive
- About 2 hours
- Arrive
- Before 10 am in summer — truly
- Trails
- Easy loops to an all-day river walk
- Park pass
- $30 per vehicle, good for 7 days
The walks
- Hall of Mosses — a 0.8-mile loop through the signature grove; short, flat, and the single most photographed forest in the park.
- Spruce Nature Trail — a 1.2-mile loop along Taft Creek and the milky-blue Hoh River; quieter, and the elk favor it in the mornings.
- Hoh River Trail — flat and glorious for as far as you care to go: Mineral Creek Falls at about 2.7 miles in makes a perfect turnaround, and strong walkers push on to Five Mile Island for a gravel-bar lunch.
Beating the queue
The Hoh’s small lot runs one-out-one-in through summer middays, and the entrance queue can hold you an hour or more between ten and four. It does get busy — planning ahead is the whole game. Leave the estate at dawn with coffee from town and you’ll have the Hall of Mosses nearly to yourself; arriving after five works too, in cathedral evening light.
A gray, drizzly forecast is not a loss here. The mosses go luminous in the wet, the greens saturate, and the crowds thin.