- Mount Angeles is the highest point between Hurricane Ridge and the Strait of Juan De Fuca in Olympic National Park. It offers incredible views from Canada to Mount Olympus. It is only about 15 miles from the town of Port Angeles and is a very popular climb, both in winter and summer. Summer offers a hike and a scramble to the top while winter offers a nice fairly easy snow climb with a short easy chute at the end to the summit. Because this is so close to the ocean, the mountains tend to dump a lot of moisture with nasty weather. It is after all how Hurricane Ridge got its name. The road to the trailhead is usually plowed through the winter though.
- Olympic Range (WA) (summitpost.org)
The salt air wafts through the forest, rising higher and higher until at last it touches the sky itself on the spiny crest of Mount Olympus. The Olympic Peninsula of Northwest Washington State is one of the most unique mountain zones on earth. What other ecosystem can boast coastal wilderness, temperate rainforest, glaciated mountain peaks and a rain shadow effect that creates massive diversity?
- Amphibian (Wikipedia)
Amphibians are ectothermic, anamniotic, four-limbed vertebrate animals that constitute the class Amphibia. In its broadest sense, it is a paraphyletic group encompassing all tetrapods excluding the amniotes (tetrapods with an amniotic membrane, such as modern reptiles, birds and mammals). All extant (living) amphibians belong to the monophyletic subclass Lissamphibia, with three living orders: Anura (frogs and toads), Urodela (salamanders), and Gymnophiona (caecilians). Evolved to be mostly semiaquatic, amphibians have adapted to inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living in freshwater, wetland or terrestrial ecosystems (such as riparian woodland, fossorial and even arboreal habitats). Their life cycle typically starts out as aquatic larvae with gills known as tadpoles, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this.