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.