- Whitehorse Mountain has it all: The mountain itself is spectacularly beautiful, especially from the little town of Darrington at it’s base: The views from the summit are world class in all directions; the hike in and the climb are difficult enough to be forever memorable; and the solitude, especially considering this mountain’s proximity to habitation, is remarkable. On this last note: During my five trips up Whitehorse’s slopes over the past few years I’ve yet to encounter a single other hiker or climber save a herd of mountain goats in one of the meadows! As if that isn’t enough, there are stories of a mad Bulgarian hermit that lived for years in a campsite on the mountain’s lower slopes and there was even a TV movie with scenes filmed on the summit icecap. (see below: Misc.) Other accounts vary slightly but I measured the round trip as a relatively short 10.6 miles, but in this distance, starting at the 912 foot trailhead you will gain over 5,900 feet to the summit and another approx 1000 feet due to several ups and downs in the middle portion of the trail for nearly a 7,000 foot total gain.
- Forks — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
Forks, a small town in the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula in an area called the West End, is one of three incorporated cities in Clallam County. It sits within traditional Quileute Indian land on a large prairie surrounded by forestland, an hour’s drive west from its largest neighbor, Port Angeles. Non-Indian settlers arrived in the late 1870s, and the town grew slowly from a remote collection of farming homesteads into a booming timber town by the 1970s, given its proximity to thousands of acres of colossal old growth forests nurtured by the area’s average rainfall of 120-plus inches a year. Timber-harvest decline and controversy over protection of wildlife habitat deeply affected the town during the 1980s and 1990s, causing anger and high unemployment. The town’s makeup has shifted from its Scandinavian-settler origins, and it has the highest Hispanic population in the Clallam County in 2007. Forks is surrounded by land zoned as commercial forest, and timber remains a large industry. Government, education, and health care are also large employers, and the town attracts tourists by taking advantage of its logging history and its proximity to rain forests, rivers, and ocean beaches.