OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Although the first official day of summer is Monday, it’s still winter on Hurricane Ridge south of Port Angeles.
As of Thursday, the ridge was covered in 4 feet of chilly snow, according to a plastic snow stake park rangers use to measure snow depth.
Not far from the stake, Joseph Brown, his wife, Brianna, and their two children were throwing snowballs at one another.
“Don’t get too close over there. You’ll fall,” Brown advised as one of the boys edged toward the edge of a moderately steep snow-covered slope.
“We’re from San Antonio, so it’s probably a little over 100 degrees there, and it hasn’t snowed there since 1985,” Brown said.
‘Snow in June’
“It’s kind of nice to come up here and see snow in June.”
Despite the snow, neither Brown nor his boys was wearing coats.
Brown himself just had a button-up shirt on with the sleeves rolled up.
“It’s not that cold,” he said of the 48-degree temperature that sunny day.
At the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center, park ranger Bob Morgenstern was busy staffing the visitor desk.
“We’re a little off of normal,” Morgenstern said of the snow level.
“It’s melting slower this year than it usually does.”
He produced a log book of snow levels which showed the snow stake recorded a maximum snow depth this season of 136 inches — 11.3 feet — on April 11.
Total snowfall through May 22 was 364 inches.
Record season 1998-1999
That’s far less than the record-setting 1998-1999 season when the snow stake log recorded settled snowpack at a depth of more than 252 inches.
Total snowfall for that season was 747 inches.
Morgenstern said the snow was so deep during the 1998-1999 winter that an extra section had to be added to the snow stake in order to measure the depth.
He showed photographs of park rangers standing atop the roof of the visitor center, with snowpack reaching all the way up to the roofline.
Morgenstern said as of Thursday, the Hurricane Hill trail was clear of snow except for a small section that was shaded by trees.
He said he thought all of the snow the Brown family was playing on would be melted by July.
Even with that snow gone, the tops of the mountains never fully lose all their white.
“They’ve always got a cap on ’em,” he said, mentioning the Carrie Glacier and Blue Glacier as two of the park’s more stubbornly icy and snowy features.
“They’re receding, but fortunately not as fast as Glacier [National Park in Montana] is losing theirs.”
If you go
Hurricane Ridge is at 5,240 feet in the Olympic National Park. Access is via the 17-mile-long Hurricane Ridge Road out of Port Angeles.
It is open every day of the week during the summer months, unless bad weather prompts a closure. Hiking is available on several trails.
Entrance fees are collected at the Heart o’ the Hills entrance station.
The park’s seven-day entrance pass, which allows a private vehicle to enter any of the park’s roadways, costs $15. The annual pass, which is good for one year, costs $30.
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Photojournalist Chris Tucker can be reached at 360-417-3524 or at chris.tucker@peninsuladailynews.com.
