Aurora Creek Trail starts on the bank across from its small paved pullout Aurora Ridge Trailhead, beside US Highway 101 on Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park, and goes ‘straight’ up the forested side of Aurora Ridge from which the highway is literally carved, up about 3,600′ in 3.4 miles. A very reasonable trail at all times, it tends to its main purpose of gaining altitude in a business-like manner. It is lightly used and not always maintained, but being under heavy canopy lower-down, and on rocky footings higher-up, the path itself does not deteriorate.
The oddly situated trailhead might be explained by the nearby broad, flat roadside location colloquially called Keith Wallace Pullout on Lake Crescent. Almost certainly, the route originally (aboriginally?) came out at the Keith Wallace site, which is a very decent setting for a satellite hamlet/village, with a small beach for canoes. Later, a business was constructed here, pilings driven to support a dock on the beach. Perhaps the early modern owners did not want the trail passing through their property, so it was ‘quartered back’ on the hillside, coming out on either the old road, or smack on the steep lakeshore (unlikely).
It’s a short walking distance on the road between the trailhead and Keith Wallace, but it does require care & alertness. Walk on the Lake side, not the bank-side. There is logging truck traffic, and big RVs who are on unfamiliar terrain. Be prepared to step over the guard rail. With big or stacked-up traffic on curves in both directions, some of the traffic will not see a pedestrian, and there is none too much extra room. Done with a little smarts, though, it’s reasonable.
The County Bus will stop at roomy Keith Wallace, but not the dinky Trailhead. Thus various two-trailhead loop through-hikes can be designed, using the bus as your ‘other car’.
There were some small-scale efforts to develop mining prospects along Aurora Ridge, and the one at Sourdough Mountain would be best-served by this trail. Ore at the time was bagged and carried out by horse or mule, and speculatively relations between the Keith Wallace proprietor and the miners could account for the alteration of its start. Small mining blossomed during the 1930s Great Depression era, much of it done by economically distressed folks (‘boots’) making minimum wages, or were grub-staked or low-key venture-capitaled by more-secure persons … rather than by rugged independent ‘real’ prospectors who supported themselves and might cut a more romantic figure. Instead, ‘miners’ were mostly economic & social ‘refugees’, and mostly not romantic.
Aurora Creek is an excellent training-trail, and a good quick-outing for those who already have mountain-legs. It’s fairly handy to town, right on the high-speed highway, little competition for the admittedly undersized trailhead pullout – and it’s just a short walk to overflow parking at Keith Wallace. More-tender hikers will slow way down, maybe taking 4 hours or more to go up. At 3 hours one is getting big-slope ready, and 2.5 hours up with a weighted pack means it’s show-time. It’s a tad steep to really fly down, but still reasonably fast. It is a bit of a lower-elevation workout, starting at 580′ and topping at 4,200′, and other, higher trails will work the lungs a little better, starting higher and going higher … but Aurora Ck wins at being fast-in and fast-out.
Modern public Bus Service on Hwy 101 runs back & forth, so the two trailheads on Lake Crescent (and others) can use a bus-shuttle to support hike-through options. Busses cannot stop at the Aurora Creek Trailhead itself, but Keith Wallace is nearby. Usually, we park at one trailhead, hike to another trailhead, and then catch the bus back to the car. Folks also use the bus exclusively. Get a current bus schedule, have a good watch, and bus fare. Be careful walking the ‘tight’ highway.
Once up the trail-route under open conditions, or guided on snow, it is good steep-ground snow-practice, early and late in the winter. It can get deep enough to hide or block the route, in mid-winter. The route up is under solid timber to near the top, and there are no signs of avalanche. Once on top, however, the route east (left) soon comes to open slopes which do pose a hazard, below Aurora Peak. None of the peaks along the Ridge amount to much of a peak, but there is sometimes a cliffy lip at the south rim, which snow probably breaks off of … and which probably would require going over onto the far north side of the ridge-crest, to pass.
Aurora Creek Trail is shown on Park hand-out maps as a Primitive and/or Unmaintained trail, along with the eastern part of the main Aurora Ridge Trail, and sometimes shows up in print as such too. But the creek climb is a solid trail; it’s only primitive in that a log may lay across it longer than usual, or a couple salal-patches might grow-in some. The main ridge-trail along the top, though, does have some issues that might trip-up the casual hiker a little … although being a well-defined ridge it’s easy enough to figure out the indistinct sections, and hard to go too far wrong while scoping it out (tho heaven knows, people will be people..). Bottom line is, Aurora Creek and Aurora Ridge do not actually bear close comparison, on the primitive-good continuum.
Views and photo-ops from along the central stretch of Aurora Ridge are a good reason to learn & use Aurora Creek Trail. Below the far south side of the Ridge is North Fork Sol Duc River – the whole watershed in a compact glance. Prominent on the far side is the trackless north & west faces of Mount Appleton, basically not otherwise visible. East, left of Appleton is the back (north) side of Boulder Peak, which has a trail on the other side. Further east, to the left along Aurora, is the western part of Happy Lake Ridge; the two are smoothly connected. Further west in the central portion of Aurora Ridge, especially around Sourdough, are improving lines of sight outside the Park and into hard-working commercial timberland.
Partway up is a short side-spur that leads to Aurora Creek itself, which is not otherwise in evidence along the trail. Perhaps originally a developed watering & rest spot for livestock, it also is on a fairly flat bench along the ridge-side and could have been a stage or stop for early human activity, too.
There are sections along the Aurora Ridge Trail near the top of the Creek trail (mainly right) through small-tree forest, with the occasional much larger long-dead snag with massive limb-knots low on the truck, and sometimes show strong tapering. These are subalpine (fir) trees that grew out in the open when alive, allowing them to have a heavy skirt of sweeping branches, right down to the ground around themselves.