Upper Lake Mills Trail, Olympic Nat’l Park to the base of Rica Canyon

Upper Lake Mills Trail, timbered slope
Upper Lake Mills Trail, timbered slope

Upper Lake Mills Trail leads 0.4 mile from the small roadside Upper Lake Mills Trailhead to the banks of the Elwha River, in the Olympic National Park.  The locale at the river coincides with the exit and termination of Rica Canyon, which forms an impassable barrier to travel.  It looks like it could be a surviving, partially unmodified fragment of an ancient mountain trail network used by the Tribes, in the Olympic Mountains that became Olympic National Park.   The trailhead is a pullout on the Whiskey Bend Road, only a short walk (1/5 mi?) down from the much larger Whiskey Bend Trailhead (which could be used as a backup), where the road dead-ends today.

Upper Lake Mills Trail, knees in tread
Upper Lake Mills Trail, knees in tread

The old road of which Whiskey Bend Road is a part was built on the earlier south foot trail to Hurricane Hill, of which this trail may have once been part.  The upper remainder of the road, past Whiskey Bend Trailhead, was then abandoned (1950s?), and converted (reverted) back to trail, now called Wolf Creek Trail (which might have been the original (Westernized) name.  Whew.

Upper Lake Mills Trail, salal in opening
Upper Lake Mills Trail, salal in opening

This little trail (fragment) got its current name, when the 1927 Glines Canyon Dam created a new Lake Mills, and the old trail-trace happened to be in the right place to access the head of the new waters.  There was also once a small camp-setting beside the river at the foot of the trail;  today, the old campground is either washed away by the river, or maybe buried under sediments of the delta that the river built at the head of the lake (and which might now make good camping, themselves).  Before Lake Mills, its impoundment area was one of the nice little valleys along the Elwha River … and now with the dams & lakes taken out, will become the valley that was the original immediate destination of the path, in the tribal days of yore.

Upper Lake Mills Trail, big leaner Doug Fir
Upper Lake Mills Trail, big leaner Doug Fir

Upper Lake Mills Trail also intersects the Elwha River at exactly the right place to make connections with the natural route up Mount Fitzhenry, which would be desirable for the same reasons that the trail went up to the Hurricane Ridge subalpine meadows.  The open high-country had strong economic and cultural roles for the Tribes.  The Hurricane environs were developed with the advent of the automobile, mainly for skiing & snow-recreation, while any trails up Fitzhenry remained ‘wilderness’ and little used, or even known, although not at all far away or particular difficult to investigate … apart from the matter of crossing the river.

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