| Day Hikes Day hikes are a safe, easy way to gain the skills you will need to stay safe in the wild--all while learning about the natural and social history of the area. You will learn about the 10 Essentials, map and compass, trip planning, risk management, and staying found. Your Guide will lend you a kit with some of the Ten Essentials, and you will hike +/- 7 miles while learning about Olympic National Park. |
Backpacking Backpacking sweeps the backpacker into the wild world of wilderness with all its grandeur and intensity. Backpackers can hike for almost as many days and almost as far as they want: for example, from Staircase in the southeast corner of the park to the Grand Valley in the northeast, from the Dosewallips in the east to Quinault in the west, or from Elwah in the north to Sol Duc in the west. |
| Leave No Trace (LNT) Trainings Leave No Trace is the national standard for outdoor recreation ethics from a conservation perspective. The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics has established two main basic trainings in LNT: Awareness Workshops and Trainer Courses. Awareness Workshops last only a couple hours and offer little or no outdoor training. Trainer Courses are an intensive overnight experience with some backpacking. |
Scouting Guide and owner Jason Bausher is an Eagle Scout, Vigil Honor recipient, and is Wood Badge-trained. He can advise your troop about 50-miler hikes, the Leave No Trace Awareness Award, and merit badges such as Hiking, Backpacking, Camping, and Climbing. Jason can also serve as a liaison with the National Park Service to organize work parties or service projects in Olympic National Park. PLUS: Grays Harbor Boy Scouts receive FREE TRAININGS! |
| Service Tourism on the Olympic Peninsula will only last if we work to conserve the resource by doing trailwork, raising money for political action, and by teaching wildness to the generation to whom we hand over the earth. |
Mountain Seminars Do the mountains, rivers, and glaciers of Olympic National Park merely form one big playground, or is wilderness essential to our Being as embodied Beings in the world? Jason Bausher works on questions such as this in his environmental philosophy, and he shares his research in mountain seminars. He received one master's degree in theology from Yale University and a second master's degree in philosophy from Fordham University. |
We say that Olympic National Park is "three parks in one:" coastal beaches, rainforest, and rainshadow. Sixty miles of wilderness coastline allow hikers to crawl around jagged rocks and walk along sandy beaches Shi Shi Beach in the north at Cape Flattery and Oil City at the mouth of the Hoh River. A dense rainforest canopy is capped by towering cedars and draped in drooping mosses fed by over 200 inches of rain per year. Rainshadow areas of subalpine meadows and barren outcroppings in the eastern region benefit from the moisture-laden clouds dropping rain as they rise over mountains such as Mount Olympus and the Valhallas. Each part of the three parks promises adventure, education, friendship, personal growth, intimacy with the non-human natural world, and opportunities for leadership.