Most Remote Point in Washington

Most Remote Point in Washington

Sept 24, 2022, 12:15am – 11:45pm

54 miles, 12,700ft gain

Eric, Talon, Branden

I’m interested in visiting hard-to-get-to locations, and I’ve recently been focusing on the most remote points in wilderness areas in washington. These locations are the farthest you can get from an existing road or from where a road can legally be built. In the past few years I’ve made trips to the most remote points in the Pasayten, Alpine Lakes, Glacier Peak, and Mt Rainier wilderness complexes. These trips are interesting because there is generally very little beta on these locations (not many people seem to be interested in these yet), and they are always in very wild and difficult-to-access areas. Surprisingly, they all have had great views, either overlooking glaciers, on the edge of an alpine tarn, or on the edge of a deep canyon.

I still hadn’t yet reached the most remote point in the Olympic wilderness complex, though. This point is interesting because I consider it to be the most remote point in the state of Washington. This means it is the farthest point from an existing road or from where a road could legally be built. This point is determined by drawing the largest circle possible inside the wilderness boundary. Then the center of the circle is the remote point.

If you count only existing roads, the location of the point would change from year to year as logging roads get built. But by defining the point to be the farthest distance from a wilderness boundary it is at a consistent location year to year.

Greg Slayden has compiled these points for the largest wilderness complexes in the lower 48 states on peakbagger.com, and Olympic National Park, which is managed as a wilderness area, has the inscribed circle with the biggest radius in Washington. This makes the center of that circle the most remote point in Washington by this definition. The remote point is 13.58 miles line of sight from the nearest wilderness boundary, which is the road at the north fork quinalt trailhead (and two other points to define the circle).

I figured out the easiest way to access this point was by hiking up from the North Fork Quinalt trailhead, then linking up with the Elwha Snow Finger route. I would then wrap around the north side of Mt Queets and get to the remote point. The point is located on the edge of a low-angle permanent snowfield northeast of the Queets Glacier, just at the base of a cliff.

If there was time after hitting the remote point I wanted to tag Mt Queets, since it was so close and then I could get a peak out of the trip also. The mileage would be kind of high, over 50 miles, but I only had one day available so figured I’d try to squeeze it in as a day trip.

Branden and Talon were interested in joining, and we met up at the trailhead Friday evening. After a few hours nap we were up and moving by 12:15am. Branden runs 100+ mile ultra races so this trip would be no problem. Talon was interested in getting a new PR for most miles in a day.

We made quick progress up the North Fork Quinalt River, passing some of the largest trees I’ve ever seen. The trail was in great shape and we saw the first hints of sunrise over Lake Margaret. By 6:30am we reached the turnoff for the Happy Hollow trail and took our first real break.

I had read recent reports that the route from here was overgrown and required some bushwhacking, so I feared our quick progress would be coming to an end. Luckily, though, the trail was in great shape for the next few miles. I think it had recently been brushed out.

By 2700ft we reached the bottom of an old avy runout and then the trail kind of petered out. We were able to follow the faint path through the brush, and then through some slide alder up the hill. The terrain would have been a slow bushwhack, but we carefully followed the track up the hill and then back down to the Elwha River. It wasn’t too bad.

It was easy walking along the Elwha river on the rocks on the side, and we soon hiked up to the edge of a snowfield around 3700ft. This must have been the start of the Elwha Snow Finger route. Interestingly, the water had carved out a huge tunnel in the snow. The easiest way forward was actually to just walk through the tunnel.

We made it a few hundred feet up the tunnel, and it was pretty light inside. In some places the ceiling was thin and let through turquoise light, which was neat. Eventually, though, it shrunk and got very dark ahead. We found a hole in the side and scrambled out, then continued on the top.

This snowfield soon ended, and we continued hiking up the creek. We encountered one more stretch of snow a bit higher, and walked through a 100 ft long tunnel. That one soon shrunk, and to get out we crawled out a hole in the ceiling to gain the top of the snowfield.

We did a bit more hiking and reached the Dodwell-Rixon Pass. From the pass we had great views of Mt Olympus to the west and many glaciers. We walked around the corner and saw a group of 15 elk wading in a pond down below. It was exciting to watch a few males chasing each other and whistling. It seemed like a scene out of a national geographic documentary.

From the pass we traversed at about 4800ft around the north side of Mt Queets, passing some beautiful tarns along the way. We soon saw the impressive Queets Glacier and the smaller snowfield just before it. We dropped down, crossed the snowfield, and reached the remote point at the base of a cliff on the west edge of the snowfield.

It was a very scenic location, as always seems to be the case with these remote points I go to. Maybe that’s why I keep trying to tag more of the remote points. We took pictures and admired the view across the valley to Mt Olympus.

It was around 11:30am and we figured we had plenty of time and energy to tag Mt Queets. From the remote point we scrambled directly up to the North Ridge at 5700ft. From there we followed the ridge crest directly south. This was the funnest part of the day, I would say, since there were many sections of exposed 3rd class scrambling with great views.

As we got closer to the summit we skirted around some gendarms on the left and had to squeeze through a few moats. By 1:45pm we were on the summit and took and extended break.

For the descent we decided to go straight down to the Elwha River. The topo map showed it was possible to avoid cliff bands, and from below this route looked like it would work. We glissaded down some snow fields, walked down some steep slabs, then got back down to the vegetation.

The bushwhacking became quite dense in places, and often I would be climbing over slide alder and hemlock so dense I couldn’t see the ground several feet below. We made it work, though, and eventually popped out back on the ascent trail.

Once on the trail it felt like the trip was almost over, even though it was still 20+miles back to the trailhead. The miles went by pretty quickly, though, on the nice trail. We were hoping to get the trip under 24 hours and all in the same day, and we made it back just in time around 11:45pm for a 23.5 hour day.

We all needed to be back home that night, so we soon started driving, making it back to Seattle by 4am ready for our Sunday plans.

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