Olympic News

Here the scenery features snow-capped mountains with 7,000-foot peaks as well as lush rain forests on the Pacific coast. The Olympic circuit: Head north from Seattle to the Whidbey Island ferry. Motor up the snake-shaped island's spine, stopping for chocolate treats in Langley or Penn Cove mussels in Coupeville before boarding your second ferry from Keystone to Port Townsend. This Victorian-era town aimed to be a thriving port during the 1888-90 railroad boom but soon went bust.

In honor of Andy Palmer, the wildland firefighter from Washington state who died this week fighting a fire in California, flags at National Park Service areas throughout the agency's Pacific West Region will fly at half staff. Palmer, 18, of Port Townsend, was hired in June as a wildland firefighter at Olympic National Park. On Tuesday, Palmer's crew was dispatched to help fight a fire in California's Shasta-Trinity National Forest. On their first day on the line, Palmer was struck by a falling tree and died.

The U.S. Forest Service says the brush fire Monday night off the road to the Staircase area of Olympic National Park was human caused. According to a news release, the fire, dubbed the East Cushman Fire, was contained before it reached one-tenth of an acre in size. An abandoned campfire ring at its origin indicated that the ignition was human caused.

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Beware the aggressive billy. He roams the Klahhane Ridge vicinity, now and again approaching people and "not backing off," Olympic National Park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said. There's no need to be alarmed when sighting this or any of the hundreds of mountain goats in the park. But "we recommend that people stay clear and not approach" the goats, she added. There have been reports of a goat in the Klahhane-Hurricane Ridge-Switchback Trail area that has refused to yield to two-legged park users, Maynes said.

The Olympic National Park's first possible case of rabies since 1977 has struck a woman who was in the Ozette campground late last week. The 55-year-old woman is getting rabies prevention treatment after a bat scratched her in the Ozette campground. Three Olympic National Park employees who responded to the incident are also receiving treatment.

National parks across the country, including ones in Washington, face obstacles to protecting their natural and cultural resources because of underfunding and understaffing, according to a new report by a national conservation group.

In 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt motorcaded through Grays Harbor County, pausing to eat lunch at Lake Quinault during a fact-finding tour of the Olympic Peninsula. It wasn’t a long stay, but long enough for FDR to be moved by the area’s stunning natural beauty and enormous stands of timber. A year later, on June 29, 1938, Roosevelt by executive decree transformed what had been the Olympic National Monument into the Olympic National Park.

The Washington Trails Association's first Volunteer Vacation crew of the 2008 season has returned, smiling and successful, from the Hoh River Trail in Olympic National Park.  In just six days, our crew completed over 2000 feet of rerouted trail segments on the Hoh River Trail that was damaged in the December storms (whole stretches of the old trail spilled into the flood-swollen river.).

The top administrator of a federal preserve of cypress-laden wetlands in southern Florida will become the new superintendent of Olympic National Park in mid-July.Karen Gustin, superintendent of Big Cypress National Preserve in Ochopee, Fla., about 45 miles west of Miami, will replace Bill Laitner, who retired in January."I am thrilled to be coming," Gustin said in an interview on her wireless phone while tending to her daughter's horse, Sundance, at their Florida home.