The Shape of the Land Today

Knowledge of the geological history of an area enables us to better understand the shape of the land today. It will be recalled that earth movements depressed the land on the north, south, and east, leaving the Olympic Mountains standing alone, isolated from other mountains. However, they are a segment of that elongated western fringe of mountains known as the Coast Range. In all that range the Olympics are the highest; yet, for western mountains they are not high, dominating Mount Olympus being only 7,965 feet above sea level. This is not to suggest, however, that the Olympics are small. These mountains have their base at sea level, or not much above, and viewed from any lowland position they appear impressive indeed. A mountain climb will confirm this idea of their size.

The Olympics are not a single range of mountains but a profusion of peaks and ridges with intervening valleys—a mountain dome 60 miles across from north to south and east to west, cut by glaciers and numerous streams into rugged peaks and steep-walled valleys. There are nearly a hundred named peaks in Olympic National Park.

Mount Olympus occupies a central position on the Peninsula. To the west the ridges descend gradually and merge with the coastal plain which varies from a few to 20 miles in width. The eastern half of the Olympics maintains a high elevation all the way to the eastern edge. There they drop steeply to Hood Canal, an arm of Puget Sound, leaving but little lowland on that side of the Peninsula. The mountains end abruptly on the north side, too, but with some foothills between them and the shores of Juan de Fuca Strait, some 3 to 6 miles distant. Except for the western slopes, the ridges have a fairly uniform elevation of between 5,000 and 6,000 feet, and the peaks rise 1,000 to 2,000 feet higher.

The Olympic high country shows the effects of glacier scouring everywhere. Numerous lakes lie in basins that were scooped out by the same glaciers that carved circular hollows at the heads of valleys. Slopes sweep upward from the basins with increasing steepness and in many places end in serrated rock ridges and pinnacles.

More than a dozen streams flow out of the Olympic Mountains, returning rain and melt water to the ocean. They drop down steeply from the high level basins; after a few swift miles they flatten out and the water takes a slower pace.