Emergency bridge repair to cut Olympic National Park in half

A road closure is about to make one of Washington’s most popular national park road trips considerably more complicated.

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The 95-year-old Hoh River Bridge south of the gateway town Forks is undergoing emergency repairs that will temporarily make it impossible to complete the usual loop around the Olympic Peninsula. For visitors hoping to pack as much of Olympic National Park as possible into a single trip, that could mean hours of extra driving.

Washington State Department of Transportation and Park Service officials have warned travelers to plan around the closures, which are slated to continue through much of October.

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The bridge has already been subject to nighttime closures, and starting Thursday, Sept. 24, it is set to close around the clock for three separate stretches:

• Sept. 24 at 5 a.m. through Sept. 29 at 5 p.m.
• Oct. 1 at 5 a.m. through Oct. 6 at noon
• Oct. 8 at 5 a.m. through Oct. 13 at noon

Closing the loop around the park

For many visitors, the appeal of Olympic National Park has been being able to make a full loop around the peninsula in a single trip, bouncing between its rainforests, mountains and rugged Pacific beaches along U.S. 101. The Hoh River Bridge closure will make that road trip nearly impossible during the extended closures.

To see destinations on both sides of the bridge, travelers will have to drive around the entire Olympic Mountain Range, following U.S. 101 to Hood Canal on the east side of the mountains before reconnecting with the coast. The total detour around the east side of the park would add an extra six hours of driving time.

That means visitors staying around Forks or heading to the Hoh Rain Forest won’t be able to simply continue south along the coast to some of the peninsula’s other major attractions.

On the south side of the closure are Ruby Beach and the Kalaloch beaches, which have become particularly popular alternatives this summer while road construction kept Rialto Beach closed. The Quinault Rain Forest is also on this side of the bridge, offering a quieter rainforest experience than the famously busy Hoh Rain Forest.

Meanwhile, some of Olympic’s biggest draws remain on the north side of the closure. The Hoh Rain Forest, Forks and the beaches around La Push are all north of the bridge, as are Lake Crescent and Hurricane Ridge. Those destinations are also generally more convenient to reach from the Seattle area, making the northern side of the park somewhat easier to tackle as a standalone trip.

The emergency repairs will also impact locals who live near the closure, particularly residents south of the bridge who drive into Forks for services. The nearest large medical facility south of the bridge is now nearly 2 hours away, a much longer drive than the 20 minutes it takes to get to a hospital in Forks.

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Road work is becoming part of the Olympic experience

The Hoh River Bridge isn’t the first time road problems have threatened access to a major corner of Olympic National Park.

Last winter, a washout along the Upper Hoh Road threatened to cut off the Hoh Rain Forest just as the spring and summer travel season was approaching. The road was ultimately repaired with emergency funding, allowing visitors to reach one of the park’s most popular destinations.

But the incident was part of a larger infrastructure problem. Roads across the Olympic Peninsula are being damaged by washouts and heavy weather faster than local and federal agencies have been able to repair them. 

Planning a national park trip is often a months-in-advance affair, particularly for visitors coming from outside Washington. That makes a disruption like this especially frustrating for anyone who already has a tightly scheduled Olympic Peninsula itinerary. 

Unless you’ve been keeping a close eye on updates from WSDOT and Olympic National Park, you could arrive expecting to drive the familiar loop around the peninsula only to discover that one bridge has effectively split the trip in two.

Most major destinations within the park are open, but this fall probably isn’t the time to make driving the entire peninsula loop the central goal of an Olympic National Park trip.