The Olympic Mountains are a mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula of western Washington.
The mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are not especially high – Mount Olympus is the highest at 7,962 ft (2,427 m); however, the eastern slopes rise out of Puget Sound from sea level and the western slopes are separated from the Pacific Ocean by the low-lying 12 to 22 mi wide Pacific Ocean coastal plain. The western slopes are the wettest place in the 48 contiguous states. Most of the mountains are protected within the bounds of the Olympic National Park.
The mountains are spread out across four counties: Clallam, Grays Harbor, Jefferson and Mason.
Geography[]
The Olympics have the form of a cluster of steep-sided peaks surrounded by heavily forested foothills and incised by deep valleys. They are surrounded by water on three sides, separated from the Pacific by the 12 to 22 mile wide coastal plain. The general form of the range is more or less circular, or somewhat horseshoe-shaped, and the drainage pattern is radial.
Rivers radiate outwards to all sides. Clockwise from windward to leeward, the major watersheds are: Satsop, Wynoochee, Humptulips, Quinault, Queets, Hoh, Bogachiel, Sol Duc (all flowing west into the Pacific Ocean; with the Satsop and Wynoochee by way of the Chehalis River, and the Humptulips by way of Grays Harbor at the mouth of the Chehalis River), Lyre, Elwha, Dungeness (all flowing north into the Strait of Juan de Fuca), Big Quilcene, Dosewallips, Duckabush, Hamma Hamma, and Skokomish (all flowing east into Hood Canal).
Climate[]
Precipitation varies greatly throughout the range, from the wet western slopes to the arid eastern ridges. Mount Olympus, nearly 8,000 feet (2,400 m) tall, is a mere 35 miles (56 km) from the Pacific Ocean, one of the steepest reliefs globally and accounting for the high precipitation of the area, as much as 240 inches (6,100 mm) of snow and rain on Mount Olympus. 140 to 170 inches (3,600 to 4,300 mm) of rain falls on the Hoh Rainforest annually, receiving the most precipitation of anywhere in the continental United States. Areas to the northeast of the mountains are located in a rain shadow and receive as little as 16 in (410 mm) of precipitation. Annual precipitation increases to about 30 in (760 mm) on the edges of the rain shadow around Port Townsend, the San Juan Islands, and Everett. 80% of precipitation falls during the winter. On the coastal plain, the winter temperature stays between 28 to 45 °F. During the summer it warms up to stay between (50 and 75 °F.
As a consequence of the high precipitation is the large number of snowfields and glaciers, reaching down to 5,000 ft above sea level. There are about 184 glaciers crowning the Olympics peaks. The most prominent glaciers are those on Mount Olympus covering approximately 10 square miles . Beyond the Olympic complex are the glaciers of Mount Carrie, the Bailey Range, Mount Christie, and Mount Anderson.