The Hoh Rainforest receives up to 140 inches of rain annually, making it one of the wettest places in the continental United States. Walk beneath its canopy and you enter a green world unlike anywhere else in North America. Sitka spruce and western red cedar tower overhead, their bark wrapped in emerald moss. Bigleaf maples wear cloaks of licorice ferns and clubmoss that drip in green curtains from every branch.

The forest floor is a chaos of nurse logs and sword ferns, new growth rising from decay in an endless cycle. Roosevelt elk - the largest unmanaged herd in the Pacific Northwest - browse the bottomlands, their bugling echoing through autumn valleys. Light filters through in shafts, illuminating the perpetual mist. The Quinault Rainforest to the south offers similar magic, its valley floor carpeted in oxalis and populated by some of the largest trees in the world.

Mount Olympus rises to 7,980 feet at the heart of the peninsula, its summit wrapped in glaciers that persist despite their distance from the Arctic. The mountain receives enormous snowfall - its glaciers exist not because of extreme cold but because of the sheer volume of precipitation. The Hoh Glacier stretches over three miles down the mountain's northeast face, feeding the river that carved the rainforest below.

The number of glaciers in the park declined from 266 in 1982 to 184 by 2009. But what remains is still impressive - Mount Olympus carries the greatest glaciation of any non-volcanic peak in the contiguous states outside the North Cascades. Hurricane Ridge offers the most accessible alpine experience, its meadows exploding with wildflowers in summer and its viewpoint revealing a panorama of peaks that seem to stretch forever.

Seventy-three miles of Pacific coastline remain almost exactly as they were when the Makah, Quileute, and Hoh peoples first walked these shores. Sea stacks rise from the surf like sentinels, their tops crowned with wind-bent trees. Tide pools teem with anemones and sea stars. Gray whales migrate past in spring, and sea otters float in kelp beds just offshore.

The beaches are strewn with driftwood from the region's great forests - massive logs bleached silver by salt and sun. At Ruby Beach, the sand sparkles with garnet crystals. At Rialto Beach, a one-mile walk leads to Hole-in-the-Wall, a sea arch carved by patient centuries of waves. Backpackers can walk the coastal wilderness for days, timing their progress around tides that periodically block passage around headlands.

The Olympic Peninsula's isolation - bounded by water on three sides and mountains on the fourth - created a living laboratory of evolution. Species evolved here that exist nowhere else: the Olympic marmot, whistling from alpine meadows; Piper's bellflower, its delicate blooms clinging to rock faces; Flett's violet, endemic to these peaks. Scientists declared the park a biological reserve to study how plants and animals adapt in isolation.

The park provides habitat for species found only along the Pacific Northwest coast, including the Roosevelt elk that Theodore Roosevelt sought to protect. Black bears are common, as are black-tailed deer. An estimated 150 cougars patrol the forests - one of the densest populations in Washington. The park contains roughly 1,500 square miles of old-growth forest, much of it never logged.

The Elwha River was dammed for a century, its salmon runs blocked, its ecosystem diminished. Then, in the largest dam removal project in American history, the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams came down between 2011 and 2014. The river now runs free for the first time in over a hundred years.

Salmon are returning. The riverbed is rebuilding. Sediment long trapped behind concrete is flowing to the coast, rebuilding beaches and estuaries. The Elwha restoration is a story of hope - proof that even after a century of damage, nature can heal when given the chance. The river's recovery offers a glimpse of what the Pacific Northwest once was, and what it might become again.