[haydenslides]

Trapper's Shelter, N Fork Quinault Trail, 8/1/21

[haydenslides]

Low Divide RS, 7/31/21

[Klondike Ken]

Thank you for this neat thread about Olympic trail shelters and structures. Its readers have dug up an amazing amount of history. I went deep into some closets for photographs the other night and was afraid I had tossed what I was looking for...until opening the next to last envelope. And most of the hoped-for pictures were together. I did not see any photos of Ten Mile Shelter on the Duckabush in the prior posts. We loved going to Ten Mile Camp back in the 1970s. The forest is so perfect there, and we could walk on giant downed trees all over the flat without ever touching the ground. The Duckabush is surely the clearest and best tasting water on the peninsula. We often slept in the shelter during winter months of low snow years. Being up on the back loft was quite mice free. The loft was also great for middle of the long night card games until we could go back to sleep. Sorry about the first photo. Bad photographer with bad equipment.

Ten Mile Shelter Duckabush River January 1976

Ten Mile Shelter Duckabush River March 1978

There is already another picture or two of the upper Duckabush Shelter and its crushing log in the thread. I took this one in late-July 1989, and am pretty sure the tree came down the previous winter judging by the green boughs on the roof. I passed the Upper Duck shelter and halfway up the hill the sky turned inky black and cut loose. Arriving at Home Sweet Home in near monsoon and thunderbolts, I spied the shelter and my jaw dropped, thinking it had been torn down. The roof was in rough shape and water was shooting inside, but was a nice spot to sit out the 5 hour storm.

Upper Duckabush Shelter late July 1989

Home Sweet Home Shelter late July 1989

I'll post more soon from other valleys. Klondike Ken

[Pyrites]

I always like that Home Sweet Home sat off to the side. You could walk over, or just go by.

[reststep]

Klondike Ken, thanks for the shelter pictures. I first went to Home Sweet Home on a scout hike around 1949 or 1950.

[Ski]

Klondike Ken: Thanks very much for sharing your photographs. Greatly appreciated. BK

[Klondike Ken]

That is a cool aspect of Home Sweet Home's shelter, how it was situated to the side instead of the trail running right next to it. Reststep, did your scouting days take you to Camp Cleland or Camp Parsons? I'm happy to share the old photos...I was very relieved to find them.

[Klondike Ken]

My buddies and I spent a lot of happy days on the West Side rivers in the 1970s and 80s, especially on the Bogachiel. We found the wonderful horse stable on a super rainy spring break week in 1976. The photographs show the horse stable gloriously full size. In the 1980s, the Bogachiel started gobbling the riverbank and the stable section by section until it was gone. I will resend the Labor day photos again some time later…the slides are way better than those scans.

Bogachiel River horse stable December 1976 K. Tanner

Bogachiel River horse stable December 1976

Bogachiel River horse stable December 1976

Bogachiel River Horse Stable Labor Day weekend 1977 D. Phillips

Bogachiel River Horse Stable Labor day weekend 1977 D. Phillips

The Hyak Shelter meadow was a sweet little oasis of grass and sky in springtime, complete with a horse enclosure. Great for tossing a frisbee, until our frozen disc splintered into 15 pieces. Klondike Ken

Hyak Shelter and Horse Enclosure Bogachiel River April 1977 K. Tanner

Hyak Shelter and horse enclosure Bogachiel River April 1977

[reststep]

Klondike Ken, I think Camp Cleland was closed before I became a scout but I do remember seeing some of the buildings at Lena Lake. I did go to Camp Parsons a couple of times around 1948. At that time they had 2 week sessions and the 2nd week was hike week. The first year I was there I went on the Charlia Lakes hike and we hiked right out of camp. The 2nd year I can’t remember but I think we hiked up the Dosewallips.

[Klondike Ken]

Reststep, I was asking about Camp Cleland on the chance you ever met Earl Hardy or Chet Ullin, if they were still active in Hood Canal Boy Scouting but I don’t think I added enough years in there. Earl and Chet were both from Bremerton and were part of the group of who built Camp Cleland in the 1920s. Chet, Earl and their climbing party made the first ascent of the Middle (1932) and North (1935) summits of Mount Stone. “Ulinn’s Bathtubs” (Stone Ponds), underneath the east flank of Stone, are named after Chet. They took their Scouts all over the eastern Olympics. Earl and Chet named Lake of the Angels in 1927, and added the fun moniker “The Hat Rack of the Gods” to the classic row of trees climbing up the basin from the lake. During the summer of 1992, a Scout leader asked me to help a couple anxious youngsters descend the headwall below Lake of the Angels. After they were off down the route, Earl, his wife, and his son and daughter-in-law happened by. Earl was 84. It did not take much conversation to find out Earl’s connection to the Olympics, and I had the honor of spending several hours that weekend wandering the basin with him and hearing his great stories. We corresponded for about two years, and he sent me a bunch of 1920s and 1930s photographs of the immediate area, including a photo of Carl Putvin’s “cabin” at Upper Lena Lake. It was impressive to see how much the timberline climbed over the decades. My wife and I had a later dinner invite, but a month before the date we sadly received a letter from Earl’s wife saying he had passed from a heart attack. Sonja sent me more pictures, and I passed everything on to the Park with her permission. Earl had asked his pal Chet to send me some letters with details of their explorations. Chet had tons of large, beautiful black & whites. I talked him into telling his story at a large Park presentation at Staircase in 1995, and the crowd loved it. One of the Park spokespersons in attendance immediately invited him to come to Port Angeles for a day and retell it again. A sideways digression from the shelters topic…

Earl Hardy (far right) and family and Vic Stanculescu (ONP) Lake of the Angels August 1992

[Klondike Ken]

Hiker's shelter and horse stable at Elkhorn before being moved Elwha River December 1991

Elkhorn hiker's shelter and horse barn beforn being moved Elwha River December 1991

Horse barn at Elkhorn before being moved Elwha River December 1991

Elkhorn hiker's shelter and horse barn before being moved January 1994 Elwha River K. Tanner

Elkhorn ranger station - Old tool/wood shed in back before being torn down April 1994

The Elwha River started gobbling up the Elkhorn meadow quickly in the early 1990s. By 1994, the winter river sounded like a giant’s bowling alley from the ranger station. Places where we had stood on the bank the night before were often gone. The hiker’s shelter and horse barn were moved back across the trail within a year or so. The ranger station photograph was added since it partly shows the old tool & woodshed out back before it was torn down and rebuilt. In November 2005, my buddy Don and I took my sixth-grader son Samuel to Elkhorn for a long weekend. It rained hard all the way in, and we were saved by Don’s famous cookies at Mary’s Falls to keep us going. Sam later told me his heart just sank as he walked into the Elkhorn opening, and first saw the side of the relocated horse barn. Sam thought that was Elkhorn Cabin, until he spied it on the little hill and smiled. The cabin had a beautiful ceramic baking oven, and baking powder biscuits on the first morning were the rule. Sadly, someone got it way too hot. The metal sides and grate in the firebox were crazily warped and the bricks were crumbling in. I took a peek photo through the shutter this last April 2021, and the baking oven is long gone. There were/are similar ovens at the Enchanted Valley Chalet and at Hayes River.

Elkhorn Cabin and beautiful ceramic baking oven April 1994

Sam and Don in Elkhorn Cabin with wet gear hanging everywhere Elwha River November 2005

Elkhorn Ranger Station Elwha River December 1992 K. Tanner

Elkhorn Ranger station Peek inside through shutter at missing baking oven April 2021

Drum’s classic Two-Seater Outhouse is leaning. And an old, closer shot of the Hayes River Station’s tool shed.

Drum's Two-Seater Outhouse Elwha River November 2005

Drum's Two-Seater Outhouse with serious lean Elwha River April 2021

Hayes Guard Station Tool Shed Elwha River April 1994

[graywolf]

I appreciate this last set of photos of the Elkhorn area of the Elwha. I started hiking up there every September, starting in 1985, to fly fish for rainbow trout. Went there every year until they shut down the fishery to help with the salmon recovery post dam removal. I remember when they moved the barn and the shelter, and the old garbage dump started to erode out of the river bank. Took my wife there a few years ago so she could see what I consider to be one of my favorite areas in ONP. Thank you very much for your contributions to this thread.

[graywolf]

[Klondike Ken]

Graywolf, That is a very sad story about Chet and Phyllis Ullin's son. I did not know Chet very well and certainly had never heard the story about Gary's climbing death. Elkhorn is also one of my very favorite places in the Olympics and I used to travel there two or three times every winter/spring during the 1990s and 2000s, either solo or with a friend. I never tired of being there or further up the valley. It had been a while since the last trip, and felt so lucky to visit last April. The extra distance due to the washout makes the area more remote and even more special.

[coldrain108]