Deer Park Campground

The sites have fire rings with grates, picnic tables, accessible pit toilets and animal-proof food lockers. There is no potable water or trash service, so bring all your drinking water and plan to pack out your garbage. Sites are first come, first served with self-registration; with only 14, arriving earlier in the day is sensible.

The campground usually operates from about June to mid-October, but snowmelt and road conditions can shift access. The road closes at the park boundary from late fall until late spring. Keep fires in the campground fire rings; at this elevation, fires outside them aren't allowed. In high winds, watch for falling branches from trees burned in a 1988 fire.

The 0.5-mile Rain Shadow Loop climbs about 170 feet to Blue Mountain's summit, where the open high ground gives a panoramic look across the lowlands and surrounding peaks. It's a good short outing if you want a view without committing to a longer hike; longer routes from Deer Park continue toward Obstruction Point, Maiden Peak and Elk Mountain. Pets and bicycles aren't allowed on park trails.

Pacific storms lose moisture as they rise over the Olympics, leaving Deer Park in the eastern rain shadow. The contrast is striking: the Hoh Rain Forest gets about 140 inches of precipitation in a year, while Sequim, just north of Deer Park, gets around 16. From the high ground, you can also see glacier-rounded foothills below.

During the last ice age, glaciers filled Olympic valleys and ice sheets wrapped around the peninsula's north and east, while some high ridges stayed less heavily glaciated. As the ice retreated, those mountaintops acted like islands for plants and animals isolated from populations elsewhere. Olympic high-country endemics include the Olympic chipmunk, Flett's violet, Olympic torrent salamander and Olympic bellflower; bellflowers bloom on Blue Mountain's summit. Olympic marmots, once common at Deer Park, are now rarely seen, likely in part because of non-native coyote predation.