stranded at Hoh
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK – Kyle Mach hoped for a happy holiday weekend when he drove into the Hoh Rain Forest.
He wound up being happy, all right – at the beginning and the end.
In between was a windstorm that raked the North Olympic Peninsula and temporarily trapped Mach and his girlfriend, Maureen Linch, near the Hoh Visitors Center.
Still, their story had a happier ending than the saga of the rental car that was trapped near the visitors center for 43 days last year when an early November flood washed out part of the Hoh Road.
For Mach and Linch, both of Seattle, it all began when they were shocked out of slumber at 3 a.m. Monday by a tree falling 30 feet from their tent.
“We could hear more trees, a lot of them, coming down,” he said Tuesday.
Mach and Linch briefly considered trying to drive out of the park by night but wisely waited until daylight.
That’s when they discovered the trees across the road.
The first two they came across were “reasonably sized,” he said.
Joined by a group of about 10 college-age campers from Bellingham, they wrestled the trees aside.
Not so the old-growth spruce they faced next.
