Hoh River,  Olympic National Park,  Aug 24, 2000 - Aug 25, 2000     page 1 / 8

We drove from the Sol Duc campground to the Hoh River trailhead on Thursday, August 24th. We had a bite of lunch in the picnic area before heading down the trail with our gear. This was really our first full family backpacking trek. We each had a load to carry. Luckily, Tom is getting strong enough to be very helpful in packing in plenty of stuff. Between Tom, Chris and I, we were able to keep the load moderate for Libby and Kevin.

We picked up a backcountry use permit and headed up the trail. It took a little encouragement at times to keep the kids walking, but we made it to the first of the camping areas by late afternoon. We had hiked about 5 miles on mostly flat terrain. We found a place near the river with some protection from the weather. We were a bit concerned about the weather, since it had become overcast and threatened to rain late in the week.