The Olympic Mountains rose from the seafloor. Immense geologic forces drove them aloft, and then constant erosion cut at them over millions of years. Absent this continual scouring action, the Olympics would be the highest mountains on Earth. They rise abruptly from the shorelines North and East, the result of ice age glaciation which spared their gentle western slopes, now home to a temperate rain forest. Everywhere abundant beauty abounds and life forms flourish from seashore to alpine cirques. The bounty and secrets of those places, known and revered by the land’s First People, went nearly unnoticed and untouched for over three hundred years, written off as too dark, difficult and daunting throughout most of the age of exploration. Today, however, although still wild and very rugged, parts of Olympic National Park are easily accessible to the three million visitors it hosts every year.
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