Location Taken: Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park
Time Taken: June 2008
Huh. Well, I now know what sort of setting to give the next horror story I’m never going to write.
This does look particularly apocalyptic, doesn’t it? There’s the classic fog, the weathered asphalt, the bare rock on one side and tilting trees on the other…
It’s not, mind you. This is a fairly normal stretch of road, all told. Well, for one on top of a mountain, that is.
That’s not fog, mind you. That’s a cloud. This road goes that high up the mountain.
The asphalt is weathered not due to long-delayed maintenance, but because being in an area where it can snow at any time of the year wears the roads down faster, and makes it tougher to get equipment in to fix them.
The rock is bare not so much because something stripped away all the vegetation, but because vegetation has trouble taking hold with the super-short growing seasons found here. Ok, that’s not fully true. Someone did strip away the soil and plants on that side, as part of creating the flat area the road is on. The short growing season is why the plants haven’t reclaimed the slope, though.
And the tilted trees? Those are pine trees, which have shallow root systems. That lets them grow in rockier terrain, but makes them more prone to coming loose from the ground. Especially on steep slopes like this one, with the added strain of the regular mountain snow.
Alas, you’re not too likely to run into a knife-wielding maniac or a horde of zombies here. Might see a bear though. That’s close enough, right?
